


Thy Soul, Alight In The Dark

by Aerlalaith



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Horror, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mystery, Possession, Psychological Trauma, Telepathy, Vulcan Culture, Vulcan Mind Melds, ghost ship - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerlalaith/pseuds/Aerlalaith
Summary: When disgraced former Starfleet captain and current salvage runner James T. Kirk stumbles upon what appears to be an abandoned Vulcan research vessel on the edge of Federation Space, he thinks he’s finally found some luck. The state of the ship and the fate of her original crew however, turn what was supposed to have been a standard day’s work into something quite a bit stranger. As Kirk and his crew debate if they can—or should—wake a sleeping survivor, it soon becomes clear that the nightmare is just beginning.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: the rating here is for eventual graphic depictions of and discussion of violence

“Sulu, bring us about, would you?” Jim half-stood, half-leaned out of the bridge chair. His fingers slid along the worn edges of the armrest fabric as he raised his hand to point at the viewer, squinting. “What in the hell _is_ that?”  
  
“Looks like a ship,” Uhura said, glancing over at the main viewer, then back to her own station. She pressed a few points on her screen, readjusting her headset.  
  
“No way that’s a ship,” Sulu commented. Long fingers danced over the consol, guiding their own vessel to gently glide closer to the object of their interest. “That’s too big.”  
  
“Maybe it’s a station.” Chekov was now spinning his chair around to take a look. His good eye widened. “That is big.”  
  
“Talks like a ship, too.”  
  
“Talks like a ship?” Sulu was clearly skeptical. Uhura gave him a deadpan look.  
  
“Talks like a ship,” she repeated flatly. “Captain.” She cocked her head at Jim, who was still frowning at the viewer. “No transmissions, but one of the engines is sending out energy pulses. Faint, though.”  
  
Jim’s focus narrowed in on her. “Energy pulses? Specify.”  
  
Uhura’s forehead furrowed in concentration as she said slowly, “Sounds to me like a warp engine on the fritz.”  
  
The atmosphere on the bridge was suddenly a great deal tenser as everyone shifted to give the ship, still hanging placidly on the viewer, a second, nervous once-over.  
  
“Sulu,” said Jim, after another moment, “let’s keep our distance until Scotty’s had a chance to take a look at her, shall we?”  
  
Even as Jim spoke, Sulu was angling their trajectory back in the direction they had come, not unlike a fish skimming away from a whale suddenly revealed to have teeth. “No argument from me, Captain,” he agreed.  
  
Jim tapped the speaker on the arm of the chair. There was some static, then nothing. Rolling his eyes, he smacked it again. “Scotty?”  
  
“…y, Captain?”  
  
“Scotty, there’s a…” he trailed off, hesitating, gaze arrested again by the sight of the giant ship. “There’s a big ship.”  
  
“A big ship, Captain?”  
  
He could still hear the skepticism in Scotty’s response through the fuzz of the static. Sighing he said, more sharply, “Yes, Mr. Scott. There is an unusually large, space faring vessel—by which I mean, _a big ship_ —taking up all the space in the viewer.” He sent another glance at it. “It must be, oh, three times the size of what the _Enterprise_ ever was. Not one hundred kilometers off our starboard side.”  
  
“Captain, that’s—bigger than the Enterprise, you say?” There was a pause. “Well that’s—erm, that’s very unusual, not much around that would’ve been bigger than her.”  
  
“Scotty.”  
  
“And she was top of the line, wasn’t she? I don’t even know if we could build a ship three times her size—not and have it move anywhere faster than a damn barge—”  
  
“Scotty.”  
  
“What I mean is, are you sure?”  
  
“Scotty,” Jim said, holding onto his patience now with the thinnest of threads. “I assure you. There is a ship of giant proportions. Here, on the edges of Federation Space, right in front of us.”  
  
There was a long pause. “And is she moving, Captain?”  
  
Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, Mr. Scott, she seems to be dead in the water.”  
  
“Well then—”  
  
“But Uhura has picked up some pulses of energy from one of her engines. If her warp core is giving off sparks still, I don’t want any of us to get closer than we already have before you’ve had a chance to look her over.”  
  
Scotty made a noise of agreement. “That’s mighty sensible of you, sir.”  
  
“I do try, Mr. Scott.”  
  
“Any life signs on her?”  
  
Before Jim could respond, there was the screeching groan of machinery in desperate need of repair, and then the sound of muffled cursing. Jim squeezed his eyes shut and pivoted around to glare at the doors to the bridge. It had opened just enough to let in the light from the other side, and not much else. “Chekov,” he said tiredly, nodding towards the source of the disturbance. “Could you please let him in?”  
  
Behind the doors there came a distinct thud, not unlike the kind of noise a boot might make when coming into violent contact with a wall.  
  
More cursing.  
  
“Already on it, Captain.” Chekov held up a wrench.  
  
“Thank you.” Jim pressed the commlink again. “Scotty, no life signs read, but from the looks of things…” he stalled for a moment, casting a glance over at Chekov, who had dropped the wrench in favor of the large steel crowbar they kept parked next to the entrance to the bridge, and who was now attempting to pry open the doors by hand. “…from the looks of things,” he said again, “I expect the bio-scanner might just be broken.” As he uttered the last of that, the viewer also fizzled out, leaving a blank screen in its place. Jim sighed.  
  
“Ah,” said Scotty delicately as, with a yelp, Chekov went tumbling backwards and the doors sprang open. The man who had been trapped behind them came marching in, fuming.  
  
“Jim, I swear to _god_ if you don’t get those doors fixed the next time we’re in dock, I’m going to take them off the hinges myself!”  
  
“Hello, Bones.” Jim flicked a wave at him, still speaking into the comm. “Anyway, Scotty, come up to the bridge when you’ve got a moment and take a look. Kirk out.”  
  
“Dr. McCoy, you know the ship won’t run with no way to seal off the bridge,” Chekov reminded him from his spot sprawled on the floor. “The safety protocols are very strict, sir.”  
  
“Aren’t there supposed to be geniuses on this flying hunk of debris?” McCoy demanded. “Just reroute the damn safety protocols—it’s far more of a hazard if I can’t get to you people in an emergency, than some imaginary instance of having to seal off the bridge from intruders. Who in the hell is going to intrude on _us_?”  
  
“Now, Bones,” Jim said reproachfully. “The _Bounty_ isn’t a hunk of debris. She’s trying her best.”  
  
McCoy’s gaze travelled past Jim to scan the entirety of the, admittedly cramped, bridge. It lingered on the stripped metal of the floor, the pried-open bridge doors, the crack running up the base of the pilot’s seat, and the outdated, knobby controls. “You’re right, Jim,” McCoy said dryly, turning back to Jim. “That’s an insult to flying hunks of debris everywhere. My apologies.” Behind his back, the viewer sputtered back to life.  
  
“See, that right there is why you always have trouble with the doors,” Jim told him. He patted his armrest. “You can’t just go insulting the lady and expect her to take it.”  
  
McCoy glowered. “It’s a ship, Jim. Not your mother.”  
  
“And thank god for that.” Jim got to his feet. “Was there something you needed?”  
  
At the question, McCoy suddenly looked grim. “Christine and I’ve just finished with the inventory.”  
  
“Oh?” There was a sinking feeling in Jim’s stomach. He tried on a smile but it came out far more like a grimace. He tried to sound encouraging. “Well, Doctor, what do we need?”  
  
“Far as I can tell?” McCoy leaned against the side of the consol. “Damn well near everything. Our last run-in cleaned us out of adrenaline, lectrazine, dermaline, axonol, and more besides.”  
  
“Naturally,” Jim said sourly. He let his head drop into his hands. “You’re going to have to make a list of what we absolutely can’t do without,” he said, massaging his temples.  
  
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance we can stock up at our next rendezvous. We’re this close to tearing off the curtains for bandages, Jim.”  
  
Jim raised his head and they locked eyes for a moment, meaning exchanged wordlessly.  
  
“Yeah,” McCoy said gruffly. “That’s what I thought.”  
  
“Sorry, Bones.” Jim’s voice was quiet. “First thing is to keep _her_ running.”  
  
McCoy crossed his arms. “My job is to keep all of _you_ running.”  
  
Jim licked his lips. “Bones—”  
  
There was a clatter on the other side of the bridge. “Captain.” Uhura spun around in her chair. “I’m picking up a transmission.”  
  
“A transmission?” Jim’s back straightened. He leaned forward, tugging absently on the fraying sleeves of his brown canvas jacket. “From the ship?”  
  
“Ship?” McCoy repeated. He was still looking at Jim.  
  
Absently, Jim thumbed in the direction of the viewer. He vaguely heard McCoy’s startled, ‘ _What in the blazes?’_ and Sulu’s answering laugh, but most of his attention was focused on Uhura. Her brow was furrowed, and she pressed her lips together, the edges of her mouth pinched in concentration.  
  
“Seems to be,” she said finally. She tilted her head, expression decidedly odd. Jim decided that he probably wasn’t going to like what she said next. Regardless.  
  
“Can you identify it?”  
  
Uhura nodded slowly. “Jim,” she said, dark eyes meeting his. “I think it’s in Vulcan.”  
  
Jim stared. “Vulcan.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You're sure?”  
  
“As sure as I can be.” She shook her head side to side, back to fiddling with the controls. “It’s pretty quiet.” She was biting her lower lip again. “I don’t think it’s a person though. It’s a repeat. Just a message.”  
  
“Can you get what it’s saying?”  
  
Uhura shrugged. “I’ll try.”  
  
A long exhale escaping him, Jim lowered himself back down into his seat. It creaked ominously as he did so, but Jim ignored it. A Vulcan ship? Here? Jim shook himself. Odd, he thought. But not impossible. “Sulu.”  
  
“Yeah, Captain?”  
  
Jim nodded to the viewer, crossing one leg over the other. “Let’s keep our distance until Scotty gets up here, but if you can circle her, I want to see if we can get a read on her hull.”  
  
Sulu nodded. “How close do you want me to get?”  
  
“No more than half of where we are now.”  
  
“Got it.” Sulu pressed forward on the stick. On the viewer, the bow of the ship magnified slightly, enough to see the clean, sleek craftsmanship of her, despite her size. Large, egg-shaped viewports, a flatly rounded bridge perched behind her nose, close enough for aesthetic appeal, but far enough to maintain some degree of unidirectional aerodynamics. There was a gap in the middle of her, about two-thirds down the body, and a large arching hoop stuck in the middle of it, presumably where the warp bubble was generated. Suddenly the thought that this might indeed be a Vulcan ship, didn’t seem quite so far fetched. “Are we looking for anything in particular?”  
  
“Just a name,” said Jim. “Or…something.”  
  
He pointedly ignored Chekov’s muttered, “I cannot even _read_ Vulcan. Can you?” and whatever Sulu’s low response was.  
  
“Jim.” McCoy had moved to stand next to him. “What in the hell would a Vulcan ship be doing all the way out here? This isn’t their usual turf.”  
  
“We’re out here,” Jim said.  
  
“You know what I mean.” McCoy’s mouth twisted. “Since the war, Vulcan’s been looking out for Vulcan. It’s like twisting their arm to send a measly patrol to Earth and we’re right next door—and the best allies they have, to boot. They wouldn’t send something like _that_ ,” he gestured towards the viewer, “all the way out to the edges of Fed territory.”  
  
Jim shrugged. “Who knows,” he said. “It’s out here. That has to mean something.”  
  
“Means they got a bad pilot, probably,” McCoy snorted.  
  
Sulu was still scanning the hull. “If that thing’s got firepower to match its size, imagine what it could do to the Klingons.”  
  
At the very thought, Jim felt a cold shudder down his back. “Enough of that,” he said. “Imagine what the Klingons could’ve done with _it_.”  
  
McCoy’s breath hissed out between his teeth. “It’s Vulcan,” he repeated, almost like he was trying to reassure himself. “Probably doesn’t even have guns.”  
  
Jim sent another assessing look at the viewer, as Sulu’s course continued to take them on a lazy ellipsoid around the ship. They were just rounding the nose. “I sincerely hope not,” he said.  
  
Chekov was squinting at it too. “Why not?”  
  
“Because,” Jim said slowly, eyeing it as they drifted closer, “if a ship like that has matching firepower, what else could have been powerful enough to put her out of commission like this?”  
  
An uneasy silence fell.  
  
“Great, Jim,” McCoy said finally. “Thanks for that lovely piece of insight.”  
  
“Captain.” They had made their way around the bow of the ship, pale metal glinting in the dark of space, and were now floating off the front of its port side. Sulu gestured at the viewer. “Writing.”  
  
Jim got to his feet. “Magnify.”  
  
Chekov’s fingers were already flying across his consol. “Oh,” he said, as the script blurred into view. “It’s—”  
  
“It’s in Vulcan,” Jim exhaled. He paused. “Damn.” Looking closer, he could see that below the Vulcan script was some smaller lettering in finely printed Standard. “VSS _Bolayek_ ,” he read. “Huh. Never heard of it.”  
  
“ _Bolayek_?” said Sulu. “That doesn’t sound like a Vulcan name to me.”  
  
Chekov crossed his arms. “How would you know? You don’t speak Vulcan either,” he accused.  
  
“Well don’t look at me,” McCoy blustered, raising his hands. “I’m a doctor, not a damn linguist—”  
  
“Point,” said Jim. Another moment of the four men glancing back and forth with each other, and then they all, as if struck by the same realization, slowly turned to regard a completely different section of the bridge. Jim cleared his throat. “Uhura?”  
  
“No, I don’t _have_ the message yet, Capt—oh.” She stopped, suddenly noticing that the entire attention of the bridge was on her. “Uh,” she said, eyebrows arching upwards. “Something you gentlemen need?” Her gaze landed on Jim, who pointed towards the image of the magnified hull.  
  
“Is that a Vulcan word?”  
  
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Well, it _is_ written in Vulcan.”  
  
“ _Uhura_ ,” said Jim, pained.  
  
She smirked at him, then took it in more carefully, making note of the fine whorls, the even lines of vertical lettering. “Of course,” she said, sounding only slightly offended that he’d even needed to ask. “Bolayek means, um, a thing that is necessary, I think. Necessity.”  
  
“The Vulcans named their ship, ‘The Necessity’?”  
  
“That’s what it says.”  
  
“Now that’s a Vulcan name if I ever heard one,” McCoy commented. He regarded the ship with a lazy eye. “Not a damned hint of sentimentality. Couldn’t name the ship the, I don’t know, the _T’Pau_ or the _Surak_. No. They needed a ship, clearly, so there.” He spread his arms. “The VSS _Necessity_.”  
  
Jim frowned, expression unsettled. “Needed a ship…like this? For what?”  
  
“You’d think we would’ve heard of something this size,” Sulu agreed. McCoy was wrinkling his nose.  
  
“You sure about that, Sulu?” he snorted. “Those green-blooded computers might be our allies, but they’re tight lipped as anything.”  
  
Jim frowned. “Bones—”  
  
“Oh, come on, Jim. You know I’m right.”  
  
“No, no.” Jim waved him down. “You are right.” He pursed his lips. “Uhura.”  
  
“Hmm?” She was still concentrating on the message she had picked up, her expression far away, but she lifted off one of the ear pieces when he spoke, and turned to him, quizzical.  
  
“How much longer do you think that’ll take?”  
  
“Not too much.” She shrugged, apologetic. “It’s a bit degraded, honestly. But I’ve almost got it.”  
  
“Good, good,” Jim murmured. He tapped his finger against the arm of the chair. “When you’re done with that, you think you can get into the Vulcan newsfeeds from here?”  
  
Uhura tilted her head. “Probably. Why?”  
  
“I want you to look up the _Bolayek_ ,” said Jim. “Even if it never made it onto the Earth feeds, maybe the Vulcan ones have something.”  
  
“Yeah, all right.”  
  
Jim stretched back in his seat as Uhura turned to her console, renewed vigor in her attention to the dials in front of her. He crossed his right leg over his left again, jiggling his ankle, and scanned the viewer. The _Bolayek_ hadn’t changed its position very much at all since they’d stumbled across it on the long-range scanner, and Jim was left to wondering just how long it had been floating here, dead in the black. Were the Vulcans looking for it at all? Or had they given it up as lost? For such a logic-driven species to just _give up_ on something like the _Bolayek_ without even a peep of anything like rescue or even salvage reaching the Earth-feeds…it seemed odd.  
  
“Jim.”  
  
McCoy was standing at his elbow, voice lowered. Jim twisted to look at him.  
  
“You know if that Vulcan ship’s anything like the rest of them, they might have some stuff I can use.”  
  
“I didn’t realize Vulcan physiology was similar enough that we could use their medications.”  
  
McCoy lifted his shoulders. “Not exactly the same,” he allowed, “but I’ll bet they’ve got some of the bare-bones stuff. And other things.” He gave Jim a wry look. “Bandages, for one. A tricorder that don’t need a new charge every twenty minutes. A dermal regenerator made sometime in the last century…” he trailed off. “You know. The basics.”  
  
“Right, I see.” Jim rubbed his chin. “I’ll bet Scotty’s had the same thought already about their engine room, too.”  
  
“Don’t tell me you didn’t.”  
  
Jim let out a breath. “I did,” he admitted. He gave the ship on the viewer another wary eye. “But before we go pilfering her, I’d like to know just what we’re walking into.” He spread his hands. “Could be someone’s already cleaned her out, too.”  
  
“You don’t really think that,” McCoy said. He jerked his head at the viewer. “Look at that hull. Clean as a whistle all over. Not a scratch on her. Are we a salvage operation or not?”  
  
“That doesn’t make me feel better about it,” said Jim. “Besides,” he pointed out, “Maybe the Vulcans are looking for her, or maybe someone’s still on board. We don’t know.”  
  
“If that’s the case, I think they’re bound to have bigger concerns than a few misplaced rolls of bandages.”  
  
“Yes, that and a dilithium crystal less than a milk run away from cracking.” Jim pressed his knuckles into his temples. “I know, I know.” He looked up. “Scotty has to have a look at her first though,” he said firmly. “And if we could get the bio-scanner back to running, that would be ideal.”  
  
“It was working yesterday,” Sulu said.  
  
“Was it?” Jim said, a little surprised. “Unusual. What did you need it for?”  
  
“Used it to find the mouse in the stores.” Sulu grinned.  
  
McCoy’s eyes widened in affront and he gripped onto the back of the captain’s chair like it was the only thing preventing him from combusting with indignation. “A mouse,” he growled. “In the food stores. Jim, do you have any idea what kind of diseases that thing could bring in? Hantavirus could be incubating in the cargo at this very instant.”  
  
“Oh!” said Chekov, glancing up. “The mouse? Yes. I have named her Irina. She is very friendly.”  
  
McCoy made a strangled noise. Jim shut his eyes.  
  
“Mr. Chekov,” he began, not really sure where he was going to go with that, but sure that he needed to say something before the ship’s doctor had to figure out how to treat himself for an aneurism. Luckily, Uhura cut in before he could finish.  
  
“Captain,” she said. “Jim. I’ve got the message.”  
  
Immediately, Jim’s attention was on her. “Yes?” he said, anticipation making his voice sharp. “What’s it say?”  
  
“It says…” she hesitated, frowning. She looked up at Jim, head tilted, eyes narrowed. “I think it says something like, ‘The mission has been unsuccessful. Do not approach.’”  
  
“The mission has been unsuccessful,” Jim echoed. He was starting to feel some faint spikes of alarm now, like maybe it _wasn’t_ such a good thing that they’d found a giant, dead ship floating in the middle of nowhere, salvage crew or no.  
  
“Do not approach?” McCoy’s face was distinctly unhappy.  
  
“Do not approach.” Sulu grimaced. “That doesn’t sound good.”  
  
Jim stood up from his chair, the movements jerky. His left knee was acting up again. Despite the ache, he began to pace. “No, Mr. Sulu,” he said. “It really doesn’t.”  
  
“Jim,” Uhrura said quietly. “I can’t reach the Earth feeds from here. I think we’re too far out, or a relay satellite might be down.”  
  
“Can you comb our own databanks?”  
  
“I can try,” Uhura said, but her voice was doubtful. Still, she tightened her hair, which had begun to escape in wisps from her ponytail, and set back to her controls.  
  
Stalking as best he could with one gimp leg, Jim made his way back over to the commlink on the captain’s chair. “Scotty.”  
  
“Scott here.”  
  
“Scotty, when do you think you can get up here?”  
  
There was an uncomfortable pause. “Ah, sorry to say, Captain, soon as I got off the comm with you the last time we, er, might’ve had some difficulty with one of the systems.”  
  
Jim felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. “Is it the warp core?”  
  
“N—not exactly. Sir. More like the water recycler.”  
  
“The _water recycler_?” Jim repeated. He was beginning to feel a migraine throbbing somewhere behind his right temple. He pressed his finger to it in the vain hopes of staving it off. “What do you mean?” It was a stupid question, Jim knew. He hadn’t spent that time as an engineer on the _Farragut_ for nothing, but it was nice to pretend for a moment that the inevitable conclusion of Scotty’s issue wasn’t what he thought it was.  
  
“Captain,” Scotty said. “If the water recycle doesn’t work properly, we don’t have anything to cool the engines.”  
  
_Yep_ , Jim thought to himself, _that did sound just about right._ He resisted the urge to bring his fist down hard on the arms of the captain’s chair—with their luck, it would probably collapse and take the entire floor of the bridge with it.  
  
“Great,” said McCoy acidly. “This death trap is finally going to kill us.”  
  
“Bones!” Jim snapped. He lowered his voice when McCoy turned to him. “That’s not helpful.” He stood and began to pace. “Scotty,” he said, pressing again on the commlink. “Tell me how it can be fixed.”  
  
Scotty’s voice crackled through. “Parts, Captain. And lots of ‘em. There’s a lot of pumps that need replacing, could do with several sheets of charcoal membrane—”  
  
“Can you jury-rig it? Maybe until we can get to a supply station?” Honestly, he would’ve taken a reasonably friendly M-class planet at this point, but an actual station seemed preferable.  
  
“That’s what I’ve _been_ doin’, Captain. They won’t hold any longer.”  
  
“Yes, all right,” Jim muttered. He thought for a moment. “Scotty.”  
  
“Aye?”  
  
“Would another ship have what you need?”  
  
“You mean the one you were telling me about? Captain, the parts need to be a least compatible—”  
  
“It’s a Vulcan ship.”  
  
“A Vulcan ship? Out here?”  
  
“Scotty.” Jim pinched the bridge of his nose. “Would they have something you could use or not?”  
  
There was some vague hemming and hawing. “They might,” Scott admitted finally. “If you think they’d be willing to share.”  
  
Jim let out of a breath. “Somehow,” he said, glancing at the ship on the viewer, “I don’t think that’s going to be the problem.”  
  
“If you say so, Captain.”  
  
“Jim.” Uhura tapped off her computer screen and swung around in her seat. “There’s nothing on the _Bolayek_ in our databases either.”  
  
“Nothing?”  
  
Uhura shook her head. “Not a word.”  
  
Jim sighed. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’ll just have to find out about her ourselves. We’ll have to send a shuttle over, see if we can find any survivors, and if not…well, maybe see if we can’t figure out what happened. If nothing else, we might get some bits and bobs to keep Mr. Scott happy.” He watched as the rest of the crew on the bridge exchanged glances, and got to his feet. “Bones.” McCoy turned to him, eyebrow lifted in an unasked query. “Let’s go down to sickbay and have a look at what you need. I’m sure Scotty’s already scrawling out a list for me.”  
  
“Sure, Jim.” Though his tone was a calm drawl, the tension in his shoulders made Jim suspect that McCoy wasn’t exactly thrilled about his plan.  
  
“Sulu,” said Jim. “You’ve got the bridge.”  
  
“Aye, Captain.”  
  
“Jim,” McCoy hissed, as soon as they were off the bridge and into the corridors, “this is a terrible idea.” Behind them, they could hear the whining cogs of the bridge doors as they tried, and failed, to close. “You don’t even know if the atmosphere on that ship is breathable. Much less—”  
  
“Vulcan is an M-class planet, Bones.” They turned down a corner. “Of course it’s breathable.”  
  
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” McCoy palmed at the door to sickbay distractedly and directed Jim to sit with a well-placed shove. “The whole thing could be vacuum—or, or poisonous. Maybe they had a carbon monoxide leak or something! You don’t know!” He reached for a shelf, grabbing a hypospray and leaned in towards Jim, settling the tip at the juncture between Jim’s neck and shoulder. “Tri-ox,” he said. “Help you do better in the poisoned Vulcan-atmo.”  
  
“You don’t know that,” Jim returned. “Ow.” He rubbed the spot on his neck where McCoy had injected the tri-ox. “Why so worried? I’m going to be wearing a suit.”  
  
“Knowing you, you’ll just take it off,” McCoy sneered. Jim watched him warily as he prepped a second hypospray, and couldn’t help the small flinch as his pant leg was pushed up and the hypospray pressed to the base of his left knee. “You should at least wait until the bio-scanners can be brought back online.”  
  
“No can do, Bones. You heard Scotty. I don’t want to think about how long we have before the system’s overheated beyond what we can repair.” In a nervous habit he’d never been able to bring himself to break despite his newfound occupation, Jim twisted the Starfleet Academy class ring around his finger. To cover the motion, he joked, “Plus, we find ourselves in trouble with the dilithium crystal, it’s not like the little specks in here will do us any good.” He pointed at the ring.  
  
“I still can’t believe you paid extra for that.”  
  
“All the engineering students got them,” Jim defended. “I earned it.”  
  
McCoy scoffed. Jim sighed.  
  
“We need this ship, Bones,” he said. “We’re not going to last without it.”  
  
“I don’t like it.”  
  
“You think I do?”  
  
McCoy crossed his arms. “Of course you do. Your favorite thing in the world is to go running into places guns blazing with no idea what what’s waiting for you.”  
  
“Now, that’s not entirely fair,” Jim objected. “It’s not like I broke the scanner.” He looked earnestly up at his friend. “We need the parts, Bones,” he said. “We need them to keep the ship in the sky, _you_ need medical supplies and, damn, it would be nice to come up with something we could sell or trade and actually make a decent living off this venture, you know?”  
  
McCoy harrumphed. “Who else are you bringing on this damn fool mission with you?”  
  
“Sulu,” said Jim, “and Uhura.”  
  
He got a grunt in response, which to Jim meant that, although he still didn’t agree with Jim’s decision to dock with the Vulcan ship and go in while they were, for all intents and purposes, completely blind to what might be waiting for them, McCoy couldn’t argue with Jim’s choice of companions. He clapped Jim on the shoulder. “There,” he said. “You’re done.”  
  
Jim slid off the edge of the biobed and readjusted his shirt. “We’ll be as quick as we can. Anything in particular you want me to keep my eye out for?”  
  
“Hell,” McCoy said, and for the first time, cracked a grin. “Maybe some of that Vulcan port.”  
  
Jim threw his head back in a laugh. “Sure, Bones. Any plomeek to go with it?”  
  
McCoy made a face. “Get on out of here,” he said, swatting at Jim. “Go and tell Sulu and Uhura they’re next. I’ll just send the list with Uhura. At least I can trust she’ll remember what everything’s called.”  
  
“That hurts, Bones. I have a great memory.”  
  
“Not on your life, Jim.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Jim made a face as he backed out of the room, nearly crashing into a rusted cart near the door, but managed to neatly avoid it with a quick spin on his right heel. “See ya later, Bones,” he called.  
  
McCoy shook his head.  
  
Given the state of the rest of their ship, it was really no surprise that the transporter was less than reliable these days. Sure, Scotty had been tinkering with it, but the engines needed his attention so often, Jim didn’t think he was willing to chance it. He had no desire to try beaming onto a mystery ship only to bite it because of a faulty transporter pattern. That being said, the _Bounty,_ modestly sized as she was, only had room for one shuttle. That meant, he informed Sulu and Uhura, if something went wrong, it was incredibly unlikely to expect any timely assistance from their own crew.  
  
“The Vulcan ship is large enough we could try to dock ship to ship with her,” Sulu suggested, but Jim shook his head.  
  
“I don’t want to risk it. With the scanners down…”  
  
Sulu exhaled. “Got it.”  
  
“Does the shuttle still have the suits?” Uhura was kneeling on the floor, going through her toolkit. She pulled out a plasma cutter. “I’m guessing we don’t want to go through the hull,” she mused. “Not if atmo’s still intact.”  
  
“The shuttle bay doors look like they’re near the belly.” Jim indicated a rough, guesswork-schematic on his PADD. “If we can find the outer control panel we should be able to hotwire it to open.”  
  
“I’ve never hotwired anything Vulcan before,” Sulu said doubtfully.  
  
Jim flashed a grin at him. “Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“Aye, Captain.”  
  
The outside of the shuttle was banged up from a run-in with some Orion competition three weeks back. Jim made a face as he took in the scratches; the Andorian colony itself had been a good find, riddled with half-built homes hastily abandoned several years previously, likely timed with the incursion of the Klingons into that sector. More importantly, while there had been little to recommend looting on the outside, wealthy Andorians, Jim knew, had a proclivity for decorating with certain, precious metals, theoretically worth enough to fund several of Scotty’s dreams.  
  
Unfortunately, the competition had ensured only the funding of Scotty’s nightmares, and added another item onto the long ‘in need of repair’ list that haunted Jim’s every waking moment.  
  
Despite its scuffed hull and old-fashioned angles, Jim rapped an affectionate fist against the pockmarked door before unlocking the outer seal and tugging it open. He directed Sulu to take the pilot’s seat. Uhura settled in as copilot, and together they began running the preflight checks.  
  
Through the transparent aluminum ports, Jim could see Scotty take his place at the shuttle bay controls.  “Sulu, whenever you’re ready.”  
  
Sulu nodded, and pressed on the shuttle’s comm. “Shuttle Bligh requesting access to the doors.”  
  
“Roger that,” Scotty replied through the speaker. “Access granted. Shuttle bay isolated. Doors opening in T-minus ten seconds.”  
  
Jim supposed he should strap himself in for their initial departure, and claimed one of the auxiliary seats closer to the equipment.  
  
“Doors opening,” said Scotty.  
  
“Shuttle Bligh ready for departure,” Sulu told him. He flipped a few switches, Jim felt the familiar hum of the engine as the shuttle rumbled fully to life. “Waiting on permission.”  
  
“Permission granted.”  
  
“Shuttle Bligh departing.”  
  
“Roger that.”  
  
There was a jolt when the shuttle’s artificial gravity was forced to compensate as they left the protective shell of the _Bounty_ , but Jim was used to it. For a moment, Jim watched through the window as the _Bounty’s_ shuttle bay doors began to close. When they latched shut, he rolled his shoulders, turning his attention back to the interior of the shuttle.  Sulu was already aiming for the _Bolayek_ ’s underbelly where, lacking any real schematics and a reliable viewer, they hoped to find the Vulcan ship’s shuttle bay. Jim unhooked his seatbelt and reached for one of the space-suits strapped against the wall.  
  
“Planning to go yourself, Captain?” Uhura asked.  
  
Jim smirked at her. “If you know anyone else better suited to hotwiring some doors, I’d love to meet them.” He tugged up the suit around his midsection.  
  
He received a reluctant smile in return. It faded when she noticed him grimace as he readjusted the black fabric around his left leg, but all she said was, “Got your toolkit?”  
  
Jim frowned. “What, you think I’m an amateur?”  
  
“On Rigel—”  
  
“Oh, come on, that was _one time_.”  
  
“And there was also Starbase Sixteen.”  
  
“Yes, yes.” Jim rolled his eyes. “Look, right here, attached to my belt—” He patted the space at his right hip, and felt nothing but the smooth polymer of spacesuit. “Ah, fuck,” he said, realizing.  
  
To her credit, Uhura barely blinked. “Locker four.”  
  
“Right, locker four,” Jim muttered, ignoring Sulu’s muffled snicker and reaching for the appropriate cubby. He keyed in the four-digit code and snagged the waiting belt. “How close are we to the _Bolayek_?”  
  
“Just passing under her nose now.” Sulu looked like he was running fully on manual approach, not even bothering with any of the vectors offered by the computer. He seemed confident enough though, so Jim left him to it. His suit on except for the helmet, Jim sat back down again.  
  
“Keep an eye out for those doors,” he said. He let his gaze sweep over the clean hull outside. “Even the Vulcans couldn’t engineer a ship without shuttle bay doors.”  
  
Uhura let out a huff of laughter. “The Vulcans did one better,” she said, pointing at the viewer. “Look.”  
  
As the shuttle swooped down beneath the belly of the Vulcan ship, it became immediately clear what Uhura was referring to.  
  
Sulu tilted his head. “Does that say ‘Shuttle Bay Doors’?”  
  
“Yep.” Uhura folded her arms, satisfied.  
  
Jim rubbed at his chin. “Say what you will about Vulcans, at least they’re reliable.”  
  
“Jim,” said Uhura. “Captain.”  
  
Jim focused on her. “What is it?”  
  
“Do you think…” she hesitated. “Do you think there’s going to be anyone on board? Alive, I mean.”  
  
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Part of me wishes there were, but.” He lifted his shoulders, a wry twist to his lips. “Nature of the job, I guess.”  
  
Uhura met his gaze. “I know,” she said, not unkindly. “It’s weird for all of us.” She tilted her head. “Half the time, I still feel like we’re here to actually rescue someone, and not, you know,” she rolled her eyes, “their scrap metal.”  
  
Jim felt something in his chest clench at her admission. His voice was quiet. “You still could. You did have a choice.”  
  
She gave him a look that very clearly stated that he was an idiot. “No,” she said, turning back to her controls. “I didn’t.”  
  
He didn’t have an answer for that one. He never did.  
  
Jim had always found the logistics of prepping for an EVA oddly soothing in their familiarity. Toolbelt snug and lines attached, he gripped his thruster pack and swung it onto his back, strapping it on as well. With a cocky salute to his crew, he stepped into the ejector at the rear of the shuttle.  
  
“Try and do your best to, you know, hover,” he said to Sulu. “Until I reel back in.”  
  
“Captain,” Sulu said, looking vaguely injured.  
  
“Don’t run me over,” Jim added. Sulu narrowed his eyes.  
  
“Just for that,” he said, “I make no promises.”  
  
Uhura tapped in the code for him. “Don’t electrocute yourself this time,” she instructed.  
  
Jim sighed. “You know that was a faulty suit.”  
  
“Uh huh,” she replied. “See you, Captain,” she added, and pressed the button.  
  
Less than a heartbeat later, Jim found himself floating. He swallowed heavily, his skull and his belly needing the moment to adjust to the absence of the shuttle’s gravity, to reorient himself and decide which way was up in the directionless vast.  
  
“You okay?” It was Uhura’s voice through the tinny earpiece on his radio. “Captain?”  
  
Jim exhaled. “I’m good.” He opened his eyes and waved at the ports on the starboard side of the shuttle to prove it.  
  
“Roger that,” said Uhura, and the static cut off.  
  
His bearings recovered, Jim angled himself away from the shuttle and towards the Vulcan script scrawled near the shuttle bay doors. He pressed the control on his jets and shot towards the wall of the ship, the tether winding out behind him. As he began to approach the hull, he eased up on the throttle; he didn’t want to brain himself by smashing head first into the side.  
  
Contact with the hull was a gentle clink. Feeling the unbroken surface beneath his cloth-covered fingertips, Jim was grateful for the mag-clips on his gloves and the tips of his boots. Not unlike a lizard climbing the smooth wall of a house, he made his way to his right, aiming for the thin, orderly crack in the hull, indicating the overlap between the extending door of the shuttle bay and the rest of the body of the ship.  
  
There was a panel, with space for a code, which Jim obviously didn’t know, and wasn’t about to spend time trying to figure out. Jim might’ve liked to joke about his occasional, misspent youth, but as he pried at the outer control panel, he couldn’t deny that sometimes, it did come in handy. The electronics to open doors were generally the same everywhere at least, Jim thought, reaching for his cutter. The panel door swung open and he was confronted with a mess of wires. A good thing, too.  
  
His work was by no means instantaneous, but before his hand started to cramp from his glove being shoved awkwardly into such a small space and forced to grasp and twist wires, there was a vibration below and the door panels to the shuttle bay began to slide apart.  
  
“Got it,” he said into his earpiece. He watched with satisfaction as Sulu responded by turning the shuttle towards the widening entrance. “Sulu, take her in.”  
  
“Aye, Captain.”  
 


	2. Chapter 2

Gravity was working.  
   
Gravity was working, which meant that after he unhooked himself from his tether to avoid being dragged into the entrance behind the shuttle, or worse, Jim was forced to awkwardly clamber down to floor level along the outer hull adjacent to the shuttle bay doors, before flinging himself inside.  
   
As it turned out, Gravity was working, and it had been set to Vulcan normal. Jim lay on the floor of the _Bolayek’s_ shuttle bay, winded and wincing.  
   
“Jim?”  
   
It was Uhura, calling him through the radio. Another moment of trying to catch his breath, and Jim managed a, “I’m good, I’m good.” Fuck, his knee was not going to thank him for that later.  
   
“You sure?”  
   
“Uh, yeah.” Stifling a groan, he clambered to his feet. With the additional gravity and the spacesuit, it was a lot more difficult than it had any right to be. “Just—give me a moment.” He prodded a spot below his ribs. Yep, that was definitely going to leave a mark. His knee ached.  
   
“Whatever you say, Captain.”  
   
“Uh huh.” Now upright, he glanced around. Earth ships tended towards metal and white. Apparently, Vulcans were all about beige. The bay was larger than the _Bounty’s_ ; nine large shuttles took up a large portion of the space, with their own _Bligh_ huddled among them like tiny duck among swans. Twisting, he spied a panel along the edge of the wall near the doors. “Ah,” he muttered. It resembled the outer door control superficially, with a similar looking keycode. He made his way towards it.  
   
If the Vulcans had ever bothered to ask Jim his opinion regarding the security of their spaceships, he might have suggested that they spend a few more credits reinforcing the metal sheeting around the panels on their door controls. Of course, the likelihood of that ever happening was exceedingly low, and it was the work of a few quick minutes—notably faster now that he wasn’t clinging onto the outside of the ship, before the shuttle bay doors were closing behind them, and the life support was re-oxygenating the bay. Next to the panel, there was what looked like a temperature control. Jim watched with satisfaction as it rose to something habitable, and then with mild alarm as it skimmed right past 290 Kelvin and went careening into 300 K instead.   
   
Vulcans.  
   
A red light on the wall next to the temperature gauge flicked off, and a blue light flicked on. Jim unlatched his helmet and took an experimental whiff of air. His suit hadn’t made any disturbing beeps or whistles, so he was going with the assumption that it probably wasn’t poisoned.   
   
“It’s clear,” he said into the radio, already struggling out of the giant paws that passed for suit gloves. He considered for a moment, then decided to leave the rest of it on; if they had to leave in a hurry, he didn’t want to have to waste time getting the damn thing back on again before activating the shuttle bay doors.   
   
Uhura and Sulu were already clambering out of the shuttle. By the time he reached them, she was at work on another security panel on the opposite side of the bay, closer to the interior of the ship. This one was also lit by a blue light.  
   
“Got it,” she said. In front of them, another set of doors slid open. Uhura waved their sole functioning tricorder in front of it. She paused to look at the readings, then glanced back at Jim. “Tricorder says the hallway’s clean. Vulcan normal. What do you think, Captain?”  
   
In response, Jim pulled his communicator out of the kit at his waist and held it up to his lips. “Kirk to Scotty.”  
   
“Scott here, sir.”  
   
“Scotty, let the rest of the crew know we’ve made it inside. Life support seems to be working just fine but,” his eyes flickered to the entrance in front of them, “no sign of anybody yet. We’ll keep in contact.”  
   
“Right, understood.”  
   
Jim pocketed the communicator. “Well,” he said, gesturing ahead into the empty corridor, “I guess we have a look around.”  
   
Sulu’s lips pressed together, “If we see anyone, sir?”  
   
“We’re here to rescue them,” Jim said firmly. He tilted his head. “Assuming they prefer to be rescued, that is.”  
   
“Really,” said Uhura.  
   
Jim shrugged. “And their stuff,” he allowed, letting loose a tight grin.  
   
Sulu snorted.   
   
During his tenure in Starfleet, Jim had been constantly throw off-kilter by the ever-present lighting in the corridors. It was fair, he knew, just because some poor soul was assigned to gamma shift, didn’t mean that they needed to make it worse by having them work in the twilight while the rest of the crew was warm and asleep in their beds. When a ship was dead, this feature was often the first thing to go, which meant that Jim and his crew had also become very used to creeping through dubiously lit corridors, clutching a flashlight in one hand and a poorly charged phaser in the other.   
   
He didn’t know if it was a deliberate difference in design or if the generator just worked better on the Vulcan ship, but as soon as they stepped into the darkened corridor, light panels above and underfoot immediately illuminated to reveal a hallway that was anything but extraordinary. The floors were smooth and the walls unmarked. There were no broken tiles off the ceiling, no flashing lights, alarms, bodies, phaser burns, or any other sign of damage. The tricorder remained silent.   
   
“Huh,” said Jim. The three of them exchanged glances. He switched off his flashlight, the others following suite. Sulu was peering ahead.  
   
“Shuttle bays tend to be decently close to engineering,” he commented.   
   
Jim nodded. “We should check out their engines first,” he agreed. “Scotty’s going to need those parts ASAP.” As he spoke, they reached a widened section with three sets of doors, sealed off.  
   
Uhura tilted her head at the door on the left. “This one.”  
   
“You sure?”   
   
“It says ‘engineering’.”  
   
An exhale. “I don’t pay you enough.”  
   
“No,” she agreed. The doors hissed open, and they were confronted with a cavernous space and a metal stairwell to guide them down.   
   
“Looks about right,” said Jim, and lead them through.  
   
The engines necessary to propel a ship the _Bolayek_ ’s size were about as impressive as Jim would have expected. The _Enterprise’s_ warp core had been top of the line, but the _Bolayek_ ’s looked something akin to if Jim had given his chief engineer an unlimited budget, five years, and carte blanche to do whatever his wildest dreams could conceive, damn the bounds of legality or the laws of physics. Even Jim, who knew the craft but not the passion, kind of wanted to put his hands all over these.   
   
Except for one thing.  
   
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Jim, putting his arms out to block Sulu and Uhura from taking another step towards the warp core. “I do believe these are live.”  
   
   
#  
   
   
“Look, Bones,” said Jim, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I don’t have time to argue with you. We need Scotty over here, and I don’t want to have to worry about more than three at a time. This is a weird situation, someone with a level head needs to stay on the _Bounty_.”  
   
A pause.  
   
“Do you speak Vulcan? Can you fly a shuttle?”  
   
The response was loud and emphatic. Jim held the communicator away from his ear with a wince.   
   
“Okay,” he said. “Look. We get the stuff to Scotty, and then next trip, you can come crash the sickbay.” He glanced around the shuttle bay, resting speculative eyes on the quiescent Vulcan shuttles. The _Bounty_ didn’t have much space for another shuttle, but maybe they were due for an upgrade. “Once we figure out where it is,” he added belatedly. “So far, all we’ve found is Engineering and some supply closets.”  
   
“Captain.” Sulu tapped him on the arm. “We’re ready to go.”  
   
“Got it.” Jim gave him a thumbs up. “See ya, Bones,” he said into the communicator, and shut it hastily before an answer was forthcoming. “I’ll get out of your hair.” He jerked his chin towards the control center, enclosed up and away from the rest of the bay.  
   
“You’re sure about this?” Sulu’s face was wary. “We still don’t know who else is on this ship.”  
   
Jim lifted his shoulder. “Someone has to open and close the shuttle bay doors, unless you want to go through all that shit with the outer panels again.”  
   
Sulu still didn’t look entirely convinced, but he seemed to realize that there was no use arguing. He turned back towards the shuttle. “All right. See you in thirty.”  
   
“I’ll keep my communicator on me,” Jim said, aiming for reassuring and probably falling short, like a kid whose parents were about to leave him home alone for the first time. He attempted to infuse a more commanding vibe into his voice. “Let me know when you need the doors reopened.”  
   
“Yessir,” said Sulu.   
   
“I’ll just be waiting right here.” Jim tapped the wall. Sulu gave him an incredibly dubious look, which Jim just returned with an easy grin. He turned to climb up the stairs to the center proper, waving Sulu onto the shuttle where Uhura had already started with the preflight checks. Once inside and sealed, he began to guess the series of keys to open the shuttlebay in a more official, or at least _controlled_ , capacity. He wasn’t far off for a lot of them. Though his Vulcan was rudimentary at best, the control panel was set up at about the standard configuration for Federation ships. Unlike what were probably the emergency, or auxiliary controls that he’d already taken advantage of, these didn’t even ask him for an access code. Jim frowned. Vulcans really needed to upgrade their security protocols. A child could hack this.   
   
He watched from the safety of his insulated perch as their shuttle took off again, then set about shutting the doors, re-oxygenating the bay, and generally letting the life support do its thing. He leaned back in his seat and glanced at his communicator. Thirty minutes, about, before he was needed to open the doors again. No problem,  
   
He lasted four.   
   
It was in the best of interest of his crew, Jim told himself, as he pocketed his communicator and made for the door. If there _was_ somebody still on this ship, it was probably better that he figured it out now, before Scotty started the dubious process of scavenging bits and pieces off a still-warm warp-core system. Even Vulcans, Jim was sure, would be unhappy to wander down to Engineering and have that be the sight that greeted them.  
   
He skulked through the pristine corridor until he reached the split, and played a small game of eenie meenie miney mo between center and right doors. He landed on the center door.  
   
The center door deposited him in a wider corridor. Jim took this as a good sign. It was still completely empty of inhabitants, which was less heartening, but Jim figured if he kept going up, he’d hit the bridge eventually. If the ship had been abandoned, there would have to be logs of some kind. Maybe he could get Uhura to check them out.   
   
On the Enterprise, it had been a safety regulation to have crude, ship-wide escape schematics nailed to almost every other exit and entrance point. It took Jim about five more minutes of walking before he spied one, which meant that either humans were way into redundancy, or Vulcans could generally be relied on to keep calm and remember where to find their asses during an emergency. He was betting on the latter.   
   
A few moments scanning the schematics, and Jim was decently confident that he had a sense of the ship’s layouts now: bridge up top, crew quarters and mess down below, Engineering in the aft and the basement, and all that glorious space in between dedicated to…labs?   
   
He thought it was labs.   
   
Jim recognized the Vulcan symbol for healers stuck safely in the middle of the body of the ship, and made a mental note to stop there if there was time after visiting the bridge. Pulling out a smaller, handheld PADD, he snapped a quick picture of the schematics for later.   
   
The path to the bridge was straightforward: up nine floors, forward, then up three more floors. He debated the safety of taking stairs rather than a turbolift, before his continued march down the corridor reminded him that he was walking around in Vulcan-normal gravity while still wearing most of a space suit.   
   
He decided to chance the lift.   
   
When he got to the entrance to the bridge, he hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to expect, or even if it would be better to have there be bodies, or some other evidence of struggle, some hint as to what had gone wrong. He needn’t have worried, however; the bridge was empty.  
   
Jim moved forward and the dim lights flickered on to full strength. The console stations, he could see, had been set to low power. Jim frowned. That had to have been deliberate. He let his fingers graze over the captain’s chair. It was cold, of course. No sign of its former occupant. His gaze slid around the room. Empty stations darkened down, no people, no damage, no sign of a struggle…  
   
Wait.   
   
Now, Jim spotted something interesting: the bridge escape pods, mandatory on all Federation ships for the past thirty years, had been launched. Perhaps someone unaccustomed to the sight would have missed it entirely. During production, the transparent aluminum was treated with a substance that made it more resistant than usual to radiation and outward force, with the side effect of tinting the capsules quite dark, but Jim knew what an ejection capsule propulsion station looked like when it was empty.   
   
He walked over to closest one, peered at it, then at the others. Two of them were still in their holds. Jim rocked back on his heels, frowning. If the escape pods had been launched, then beaming capabilities must have been compromised, or (alternatively) there had been nowhere to beam to. If two of the pods remained, yet the bridge was completely devoid of anyone—alive or otherwise—then that meant that a full crew complement couldn’t have been on the bridge when the order was given to abandon ship.   
   
Damn, he really needed to get a look at those logs.   
   
   
#  
   
   
“Listen,” Jim said as soon as the shuttle hangar had been re-oxygenated and Sulu, Uhura, and Scotty had stumbled off the shuttle, “things just got more complicated.”  
   
Scotty was already twisting his neck around to view the expanse of the shuttles around them. “This is fantastic,” he said. “Love the structure. We should try and incorporate some of this design—classic Vulcan, though. I don’t know what it is but those green bastards love arches. Am I right, Captain?”  
   
“Uh,” said Jim, who had never really considered it.  
   
Uhura folded her arms. “Complicated?”  
   
Sulu’s eyes flickered to Jim’s face, around the room, and back to the shuttle. His hand moved down towards the phaser at his belt. “Captain?” he said.  
   
Jim opened his mouth.  
   
“The thing is,” Scotty continued, now looking quizzical. “If the ship was evacuated…why are all the shuttles here?”  
   
Jim exhaled. He locked eyes with Uhura in a silent message. Her own eyes widened.    
   
“They could have been beamed off,” Sulu said.  
   
“No,” said Jim. “There’s still some shield function. They didn’t beam.”  
   
“How do you know that?”  
   
“I went to the Bridge.” Jim had to admit, he was a little hurt that exactly none of his crew looked surprised.   
   
“Of course you did,” sighed Uhura.   
   
“Life pods,” said Scotty. Jim glanced at him.   
   
“Not all of them,” he said grimly. He continued, “I managed to access the computer and the crew roster.” He wiped his hands on his legs, beginning to pace.   
   
“I didn’t realize your Vulcan was that good,” Uhura murmured.  
   
Jim shrugged. “They had a language option.”  
   
“Oh?”  
   
“Yeah, not the captain’s logs though. I’m going to need you on the bridge in a moment to see if you can get anything from them.” He paused, looking at Scotty and Sulu, trying to gauge their understanding. “Crew compliment was one hundred and fifteen.”  
   
“For a ship this size?” Scotty’s frown was skeptical.  
   
“Operations and some kind of research. Bare bones.”  
   
Scotty hmphed, clearly unimpressed. “No wonder the ship stopped working.”  
   
“The escape pods on the bridge had been activated.” Jim pressed his lips together. “Except two.” He pulled out the PADD with the picture of the ship’s schematics. “I went up this way,” he said, pointing. “And I came back down here, close to the med bay. A lot of the emergency pods along the outer corridor here and here,” he jabbed at the screen, “were jettisoned. But not all of them.” He nodded to their surroundings. His voice sharpened. “There are nine shuttles in here. Not all the escape pods are gone. No one should’ve been able to beam on or off with the shields even at minimum.”  
   
Sulu’s eyes narrowed. “You’re saying some are still on this ship.”  
   
Jim nodded. “At least fifteen. Probably more. Like I said: complicated.”  
   
“But they haven’t tried to stop us,” said Scotty. “There’s been no alarm. Does that mean, you think…?” he stopped, expression uneasy.   
   
Uhura brought her fingers together. “There was no sign of attack on the outer hull. Why did they leave?”  
   
Sulu squinted thoughtfully. “If it wasn’t external,” he said slowly, “it may have been something internal.” His shoulders suddenly tighter, his attention flickered to the walls of the hangar. His right hand remained down at his hip, within easy reach of the phaser on his belt.  
   
“Oh,” Scotty said, voice a bit higher pitched than his usual. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Well, that’s just wonderful. So glad to be welcomed aboard here. Sir.”  
   
“You haven’t found any bodies.” Sulu was still scanning the walls.  
   
Jim confirmed. “None so far.”  
   
Sulu’s lips twisted. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.”  
   
“Like Bones would say if he were here,” said Jim, with a huff of something that didn’t quite pass for humor, “I have a bad feeling about this.”  
   
Uhura hummed in agreement, nearly as wary as Sulu. Jim focused on her. “Can you take a look at the Captain’s logs?”  
   
“Sure,” she said, the lines on her forehead furrowed. She looked deep in thought. “Captain.”  
   
“Yeah?”  
   
“If there was some kind of accident,” she said, “and there were casualties.” She tilted her head. “They might be in sickbay. Bodies, I mean.”  
   
“Oh, shit,” Jim said, realizing. He thought for a second. “Okay.” He pointed at Scotty, “You go down to the engine room. Uhura, I need you on the bridge looking at those logs. Sulu,” he pursed his lips, then nodded, “Scotty might need another pair of hands.”  
   
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” protested Scotty.  
   
Sulu crossed his arms in front of his chest. “We know there’s no one in the engine room—what if there’s someone in sickbay?”  
   
“If they’re in sickbay, I doubt they’re going to attack me.” He smirked. “Unless you’re worried about zombies.”  
   
“That would be funny if it weren’t for that thing that happened on Torus III,” Sulu replied. Jim winced.   
   
“I forgot about that.”  
   
Uhura shuddered. “I think we all tried to forget about that.”  
   
His eyebrows drawing together, Scotty admitted, “I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”  
   
Jim sighed. “Look,” he told them. “The engine parts are what’s most important. I want both of you on the job. Then we can worry about the rest of this mystery. I’ll be perfectly fine checking out the sickbay. I’ve got McCoy’s list,” he patted his side, “and I’ve got the ship’s layout.”  
   
“Those sound like some famous last words,” Scotty observed.   
   
“Don’t forget your communicator,” Uhura said.  
   
He glared at her. “Again with the communicator thing. What are you, my mother?”  
   
“Sometimes I wonder, Captain.” She and Sulu exchanged a commiserating look. Jim huffed.   
   
“You and you,” he said, pointing to Scotty and Sulu. “Engine room. You and me.” He pointed at Uhura. “Bridge and then, if everything’s kosher, sickbay.”  
   
“Aye, Captain,” Sulu said, while Scotty clapped his hands together.   
   
“I’ll bet she’s a beaut. Can’t wait to get a look at her parts.”  
   
Sulu looked vaguely nauseated. “Oh my god.”  
   
“Come on,” Jim said to Uhura hastily. They left the other two behind, the sounds of Scotty’s appreciation following them down the corridor.  
   
“Jim,” said Uhura, after a few minutes and another staircase. Her voice was quiet, barely audible above the hum of the ship. “What do you think happened here?”  
   
“I don’t know,” Jim said honestly. He gestured at a door. “This way.”  
   
“Do you have a guess?”  
   
He shook his head. “Not any good ones.”  
   
“A bad one, then?”  
   
He exhaled. “I think we’ll have a better idea once you get a chance to look at those logs. Here.” He pressed an access panel next to another door. “The bridge.”  
   
Reassuringly, now that they had deduced that it was at least possible that they were not, in fact, alone on the ship, the bridge was unchanged from when Jim had been there less than an hour before. Uhura made an unerring beeline for the communications equipment.   
   
“How is it?”  
   
“Similar enough.” She poked at the panel.  
   
“You think you can access the Captain’s logs from there?”  
   
“Probably.”  
   
Jim raised his eyebrows. “If you’re sure…”  
   
She rolled her eyes. “Just get out of here,” she said. “It’s going to take me a couple of minutes at least.”  
   
He nodded. “I’ll comm you when I get to sickbay. Let you know if it’d be better to join me there, or go down to engineering.”  
   
“Yeah, okay,” she said absently. Clearly in her element, she already had something on the screen up and running, the whole thing full of indiscernible lines of Vulcan script. He left her to it.  
   
After consulting with the picture he’d taken to double check for the location of the sickbay, Jim picked a corridor that looked like it headed into the interior of the ship. On his way there, he passed by several empty rooms. As he passed by, he tried to get a look through any that had small windows or portholes. The ones he could see into looked like general-purpose laboratories; he spotted plants growing, what looked like a labeled pile of rock samples in another, and a table overrun with test tubes in yet another.   
   
Out of curiosity and about halfway to sickbay, he tested to see if he could ease one of the doors open. It didn’t budge. Jim peered into the window and saw more samples. They looked kind of like broken clay pots, meticulously labeled and ordered on one of the lab tables.   
   
Weird.   
   
As he walked, he tried to keep his wits about him, pausing every once in a while to watch for anything out of the ordinary. Aside from the fact that the entire crew complement seemed to have vanished into thin air however, there was nothing.  
   
Given the size of the ship, it was a least five minutes of walking before he reached his destination. It was easy to identify. No matter the ship, Bones had explained to him once, the sickbay always had to have the double doors. Something to do with being wide enough to fit a team and a gurney through. Jim was just glad of anything that made navigating an unknown ship that much easier. Given that he was still wearing the majority of his space suit, he was also glad for anything that made it less awkward to fit through a doorway.   
   
Although he had been aiming for a subtle approach, as soon as he neared the doors, both of them slid open automatically. Still cautious, Jim approached. Ahead of him, lights flickered, and he hesitated just on the threshold.  
   
This was the first incidence of anything amiss with the lighting. Out of habit, he reached for the phaser clipped to the belt at his side, and unhooked it. He flicked off the safety, but kept the setting on stun; he didn’t want to accidentally shoot any Vulcan survivors of…whatever.   
   
As soon as he stepped into the sickbay itself, he knew they were finally on to something. His boots crunching over broken glass, Jim surveyed the room. It was empty of life, but there were several smashed vials at his feet, a cabinet wide open with half of its supplies tumbled out, bandages and hyposprays and bottles of what could have been medication scattered over a suspiciously blackened floor. Glancing up, Jim saw that the protective plating on one of the overhead fixtures had been cracked in two, and that the light behind it had also been damaged, hence the flickering. Not unusually, all of the tables and chairs were bolted down, so none of the furniture was turned over, but there were several dents along the back of one of the chairs furthest from the entry doors. Leaning in close, Jim could see that the dents were, perhaps coincidentally, just the right size for a grown man’s fist.  
   
There was a drab olive smear across the table.  
   
Jim didn’t know much about Vulcans, but he knew that they were a notoriously private group. Beyond the main area of the sickbay, which featured an open floor with scattered examination tables and monitoring equipment, there was a short hallway leading to what Jim guessed were several private examination rooms. He poked his head around to the first one, and recoiled.   
   
The desiccated corpse of a Vulcan male lay crumped on the floor.   
   
“Fuck,” Jim said feelingly, putting his hand to his mouth. Swallowing, thankful that whatever air circulation was functioning on the ship seemed to keep the smell at bay, he stepped forward and crouched down. His already beleaguered knee protested, but he ignored it in favor of gingerly examining the body in front of him.  
   
He was no expert, but this guy had to have been dead for quite a while. In the absence of insects to speed up the decomposition process, and in the presence of the dry, sterile, and Vulcan-warm recirculated air of the ship, he was well on his way to becoming a mummy.   
   
But he wasn’t quite there yet. He was wearing a dark green uniform, the jacket closing over from right to left, latching onto several brass buttons along the side. There was a patch on his arm. It didn’t seem to signify any sort of rank, or at least not one Jim could identify, but perhaps it was an affiliation with something. It featured a half circle with an equilateral triangle stuck in the center. Inside the triangle, an Archimedean spiral swirled to a single, central point. It almost looked like an eye.  
   
Jim sat back on his heels and reached for his communicator.   
   
“Hey,” he said. “Scotty. Where are you on those engines?”  
   
There was a crackle of static before Scotty’s reply came through. “Been moving a wee bit delicately, sir. These cores—there’s not a thing wrong with ‘em that a bit of attention wouldn’t fix. The coolant system’s a decent match for ours though. I should be able to fix her up.”  
   
“Right…” said Jim slowly. “That’s good.” He looked down at the body at his feet. “Is Sulu with you?”  
   
“Here, Captain.”  
   
“Listen. I uh…I’ve got at least one body in the sickbay. No sign of what killed him, and he’s been dead for quite a while by the looks of it.”  
   
He got a moment of silence. “No signs of a struggle?”  
   
“Nothing on the body itself. Looks like something could’ve happened in the entryway though.”  
   
“Huh,” said Sulu. “Do you need another set of hands up there?”  
   
Gnawing on his lower lip, Jim surveyed the scene again. “No,” he decided. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, but I think we actually do need to get McCoy over here. Scotty, you get the parts you need to fix up our hydro-system and then you and Sulu get back to the _Bounty_ stat. I want you to switch places with McCoy, and start working on our cooling system. Sulu, you mind getting the good doctor over here?”  
   
“No problem. What about Uhura?”  
   
“I’ll let her know what’s going on, but I need her on those logs for now. At this point, I think they’re our best chance for figuring out whatever the hell happened.”  
   
“Okay,” said Sulu. “Got it.” There was a loud clanging noise in the background, a crash, and then a slightly panicked, “Watch it!” from Sulu, though it was largely overshadowed by a triumphant shout that had to come from Scotty. Jim bit back a sigh.  
   
“Let me know when you guys head out,” he said. “I can be down there to work the shuttle bay controls.”  
   
“Nah,” said Scotty, “I should be able to rig it to a timer. See you back on the ship, Captain.”  
   
“You can do that?”  
   
“Captain,” Scott said, injured.   
   
“Right, sorry I asked.”  
   
Scotty sniffed. “It’s not a problem. We’ll try and work fast.”  
   
“Thanks, Scotty,” Jim said. He hung up, then immediately punched in the code for Uhura. “Hey,” he said, when she answered. “Slight change in plans.”  
   
She listened intently to his explanation.  
   
“Just the one body?” she asked, after he’d finished.   
   
“In this room.” He let out a breath. “I haven’t had a chance to check out all the rooms yet.”  
   
“Are you going to?”  
   
“That’s the idea.”  
   
“Maybe I should come down there.”  
   
“No,” said Jim. “I need you working on those logs.” He looked around. “I haven’t exactly been quiet. If someone was going to attack me, they’d have had plenty of opportunity.”  
   
“If you’re sure,” she said dubiously.  
   
“Give me a heads up if you find anything interesting in those logs though.”  
   
“Of course,” she said. She let a quiet exhale slip through the speaker. Jim could picture her rubbing her temples. “All I’ve got at this point are instructions they’ve had to head to one set of coordinates or another, some stuff about the findings from the science team.”  
   
“Anything good?”  
   
“The _tri’hla_ died on the sixth day.”  
   
“Uh…okay?”  
   
“I think it’s a plant.”  
   
“Great,” said Jim. “That doesn’t tell us much.”  
   
“Yeah. Anyway, I’ll keep going through it.”  
   
“Thanks,” said Jim.  
   
When he’d finished with Uhura, he decided that maybe it wasn’t entirely necessary to spend all his time on the communicator while crouched next to a gruesome corpse. Stepping away from the body and back into the hallway, he brought up the contact for McCoy.   
   
“Jim? What’s going on?”  
   
As Jim explained and McCoy began to lay into him about every decision he’d made up to that precise moment, Jim began poking his head into the rest of the examination rooms.  
   
“Look,” he said, “I don’t think he died of any disease or any sort of toxic exposure of something. Don’t you think there’d be a lot more bodies if there was something like that?” He paused. “No, Uhura hasn’t found anything in the logs about a virus that makes people go crazy—oh. Huh.”  
   
Stepping into the final unexplored room, he stilled at the sight that greeted him. Instead of a standard examination room, this one was larger. It contained four coffin-sized pods, hooked up to monitoring equipment. Three of them were empty. The fourth was not.   
   
Inside, what looked like a perfectly preserved Vulcan male lay prone. His fingers were linked together across his chest, and he wore the same uniform that Jim had seen on the body in the other room. His face was pale, and his body, still.   
   
A light blinked sluggishly on the front panel of the pod holding him. Jim practically leaped over the other pods to get a look at it.  
   
Unaware, McCoy prattled on.  
   
 _“And another thing, Jim. I’ll bet you didn’t think to check if that body had any kind of spots on it, did you? God, I hope you didn’t touch it…”_  
   
“Bones,” Jim said faintly, eying the series of blue lights and the steady _beep_ - _beep_ coming from the panel, “you’re not going to believe this.”  
   
 _“Huh? Believe what? What’s going on over there, Jim?”_  
   
Jim placed a hand over the transparent aluminum. “I think we’ve got a live one.” 


	3. Chapter 3

“Cryogenics,” McCoy announced. He glided into the sickbay like a king returned to his rightful throne, stopped briefly in the other examination room to declare the dead Vulcan dead (which Jim privately thought was obvious), and had now joined Jim in staring at the stranger in the cryopod.   
   
“Cryogenics,” Jim repeated warily. He scrubbed his face with the back of his hand.   
   
McCoy lifted one shoulder, as if to convey, _beats me_. He leaned in, peering at the display. “Damn good tech too, by the looks of it. Tricorder says that fellow in the other room’s been a goner for a good couple of years, which means this one,” he gave the outside of the pod a gentle smack, “has to have been in here at least that long.”  
   
“The last log entry is dated to around that point too,” said Uhura, coming up to him. Her gaze lingered on the pod as she stuck a data chip into Jim’s PADD and handed the whole thing back over.  
   
“Did you get a translation for the entry?”  
   
Uhura nodded. “It’s strange.”  
   
“All of this is strange.” Jim began to flip through the data. Names and dates and unrecognizable Vulcan characters swam before him. “What did it say?”  
   
Uhura shrugged. “Nothing until afternoon, all systems normal. But at fourteen hundred hours there was a report of an explosion in lab eleven.”   
   
“Lab eleven?” Jim interrupted.   
   
“Here.” She brought her own data pad out and showed him a map of the ship’s schematics. It was a lot nicer than the crude emergency diagram that Jim had snapped a picture of. She must have gotten it off of the ship’s computer.  
   
“That’s close to here,” he observed.  
   
“Yeah,” she said, “The opposite of where we came though, a bit more towards the stern.”  
   
He tracked McCoy’s movements out of the corner of his vision. “We should go there next.”  
   
“No,” McCoy retorted, now whirring a beeping medical tricorder over the cryopod, “we should deal with this guy next. Look at this, there’s not a sign of any deterioration. Muscles look good, brain function’s low on account of being iced over, but that’s no surprise. No organ failure, nothing broken.”   
   
Jim narrowed his eyes at the tricorder. “Where’d you get that?”  
   
“Front supply closet.” He looked possessive, cradling it in his hands. “And I’m keeping it.”  
   
Jim gave him a dubious look. He lifted his chin towards the cryopod. “I wasn’t aware that tricorders could sense through transparent aluminum.”  
   
McCoy rolled his eyes. “It’s getting the readings from the pod’s stats, Jim. Jesus, you think I’d be dumb enough to just wave it over some glass panel and hope for the best?”  
   
“And you can read it?”  
   
“I had Ms. Uhura here switch the language for me.” He sniffed. “It’s set to Vulcan normal.”  
   
“Logical.”   
   
McCoy rolled his eyes. “If it were set to anything else I’d have a lot more questions. As it is, this man’s readings are a bit unusual.”  
   
“Unusual?” Jim said sharply. “Unusual how?”  
   
“They’re within range of what the tricorder considers Vulcan normal—don’t let me get started on their blood pressure stats. Jesus lord almighty.” McCoy was still studying the data output from the tricorder. “He’s fine, is what I’m saying. Just not quite average.” He set the tricorder down on top of the cryopod. “Could just be an effect of the freezing.”  
   
“Jim,” Uhura said quietly. He turned to her. She said, “After the explosion, the logs say that the captain sent down part of his bridge crew to deal with the fallout. The next entry says that containment was breached. Anything near lab eleven was sealed off—which I guess included the sickbay—and that evacuation procedure was to begin immediately. Apparently, they also sent off a message to the Vulcan High Council, but who knows if it got through.”   
   
A couple of years ago, they’d all had a very different career trajectory, Jim thought, but he was sure he’d never heard of such a message. “Starfleet certainly never said anything.”  
   
Uhura pulled up another map, this one with a section outlined in red. “Here are the areas that were sealed.”  
   
Jim glanced at the map. “That’s exactly where we’re standing,” he said, with a sort of forced calm he did not feel.   
   
McCoy’s mouth pulled into a very displeased expression. “I don’t like the sound of any kind of containment being breached.”  
   
“I don’t think anyone likes the sound of some kind of containment being breached.” Jim looked at both of them. “I didn’t walk through any kind of noticeable lockdown on my way through here, either. And unless we took different routes, I think that goes for all of us.”  
   
“No,” Uhura agreed. She closed up her data pad. “That’s the last entry,” she added, “but that doesn’t explain why everyone evacuated even after the area was sealed off.”  
   
“It might not have been to contain it,” said Jim. He rubbed his mouth thoughtfully, beginning to pace. “It might’ve just been to slow it down. If it was going to be bad no matter what, that’s what I would’ve done.”  
   
“It?” McCoy demanded. “What’s _it_? Why are we assuming there’s an _‘it’_ now?”  
   
“Isn’t that standard procedure?” Uhura asked dryly.  
   
“Jim, this is serious. Something made the Vulcans leap off this perfectly good ship like it was on fire—”  
   
“I don’t know, if there was an explosion it might have actually been on fire.”  
   
“Don’t be an ass. You know what I mean. Whatever made them leave, they were so sure they couldn’t do anything about it but run, they left this whole ship—and this fellow, whoever the hell he is—to rot. Now, that makes me think some kind of disease. Something viral or, hell, they were doing something with plants, weren’t they? Could’ve been microbial for all we know.”  
   
“You always think it’s some kind of disease,” said Jim. “It could’ve been something else.” He pressed his lips together. “The tricorder didn’t pick up anything unusual?”  
   
McCoy scowled at him. “The tricorder only picks up what it knows to pick up.” He gestured to the room. “If there’s something here it’s never seen before, it’s not going to know that it’s here.”  
   
“The Vulcans left in a hurry,” said Uhura. “We’ve been on this ship for hours. If there was something like a virus—don’t you think after months in deep space it might be dead by now?”  
   
“It could be dormant.”  
   
“Maybe it doesn’t even affect humans—hey, wait.” Jim crossed his arms. “We don’t even know if it _is_ a virus. Or microbes. Or spores, or whatever.”  
   
“We don’t know that it isn’t,” said McCoy.  
   
“Bones, I don’t think that’s quite a valid argument.”  
   
McCoy breathed out heavily through his nose. “I need to take some samples,” he said. He held out his hands, palms up, then flipped them over to look at the back, examining the state of his own skin. “We’re probably all contaminated.”  
   
“We could just ask him.”  
   
Dropping his hands to his sides, McCoy gave him a look. Jim shrugged.  
   
“What? He could probably tell us exactly what happened.”  
   
“Maybe he was the problem,” said Uhura.  
   
McCoy’s eyes bulged. “Thank you! See?”  
   
“I really don’t. Look, he’s got a uniform. Maybe we can get his info from the ship’s computer.”  
   
 “Jim, if you think I’m going to try and wake up a contaminated green popsicle on a ghost ship with medical equipment from an entirely different planet—”  
   
“Why not?”  
   
“Did you not just hear the words that came out of my mouth?”  
   
“What, do you think he’d die or something?”  
   
“Of course not,” McCoy snapped. “But we might!”  
   
“But you could wake him up without killing him?”  
   
“That’s not the point, Jim!” McCoy was now standing directly in front of the cryopod, blocking the code pad, as if he thought that Jim was planning to leap over him and pry off the cover. He crossed his arms. “This guy could be some kind of crazy person. He could be carrying some kind of horrible disease, he could—”  
   
“He could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and thought that his crew was going to come back for him,” Jim said reasonably. He snorted. “Have you ever met a crazy Vulcan? I don’t think they exist.”  
   
“Of course they do,” McCoy said haughtily. “Every species is susceptible to biochemical quirks in the brain. Even the walking computers.”   
   
“He’s not a crazy person,” said Uhura. She had somehow managed to sneak around McCoy to the other side of the cryopod and was typing something into her PADD again. “According to the crew manifesto at least.”  
   
“Where in the blazes did you get the crew manifesto?”  
   
Uhura raised an eyebrow. “Jim said there was a dead guy, I thought it would be useful to see if we could ID him. I downloaded it when I was looking at the logs.”  
   
“I knew I hired you for a good reason,” Jim said, smiling.   
   
“Please,” Uhura said, “like you had anything to do with hiring any of us.”  
   
“That’s true,” McCoy put in. “I was coerced.”  
   
“You were not!” Jim sputtered. “ _You_ were the one who came up with the idea!”  
   
“Anyway,” said Uhura, “the patch on his uniform says he was part of the science team, so taking out anyone from operations…” she was skimming through the data again, “…males only…hmmm. What do you think, maybe this guy?” She held out the screen for them to see. “He looks pretty similar.”  
   
“No,” Jim said, staring down at the picture, “this guy’s face is a little different? I think it’s the cheekbones.”  
   
“Okay.” Uhura skimmed through a few more. “Oh.” She held out the screen again. “This one.”  
   
A glance was all that it took. “Definitely this guy,” Jim agreed. They all looked down at the man in the cryopod, then back to the picture. The man in the cryopod was paler, and his eyes were closed, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Jim scanned over the ID again. All the information was written in Vulcan. He lifted his head up to look at Uhura. “What’s it say?”  
   
She took it back. “Says his name is Spock,” she read. “Born Stardate 2230.06 in ShiKahr. He holds the Vulcan equivalent of a PhD from the VSA, and a rank of Lieutenant in the Vulcan Military Corps.”  
   
“Must’ve joined up during the war,” Jim murmured.   
   
Uhura grimaced. “Must’ve been something to make him leave a fancy VSA post and join the Corps.”  
   
“I know a lot of the Vulcan soldiers signed on after the Battle of Delta Vega.” Jim took in a breath. “Near misses like that tend to bring out that latent patriotism, you know?”  
   
McCoy snorted. “God save us.”  
   
“Says he has an A7 computing ranking.”  
   
Jim lifted both eyebrows, but McCoy didn’t look all that impressed. “Was that his specialty?” he asked. “Computers?”  
   
“No,” said Uhura. She squinted, “Says here, physics and…psychology?”  
   
“What,” McCoy said flatly.  
   
“No,” said Uhura. “Sorry.” She was shaking her head, “The translation’s weird. Not like counseling. Something to do with Vulcan telepathy. The physics of it. I don’t think we have a word for it in Federation Standard.”  
   
“That just makes it weirder.”  
   
Jim was back to examining the outer hull of the cryopod, fingers searching along the smooth sides of the machine. It looked all too much like a coffin, he thought. He lifted his head. “Does it say what kind of work he was doing here?”  
   
“No,” Uhura said. “But he was assigned to lab eleven.”  
   
Jim hummed. “Lab eleven,” he said. “Interesting.”  
   
McCoy’s mouth immediately tightened. “ _No_ , Jim,” he said.   
   
“Just a look,” said Jim. He tilted his head. “A quick peek.”  
   
“No.”  
   
“Come on.” He smiled winsomely. “It might give us an idea what’s wrong with the guy before we try and wake him up.”  
   
“I never said I was waking him up!” McCoy brandished the tricorder at him.   
   
Jim reached out and snagged him by the shoulder. “Come on, Bones,” he said, as McCoy let out an audible groan, “we’re already in the contamination zone. We might as well take the grand tour.” He gestured to Uhura. “You have the map. Which way?”  
   
“Looks like we can go straight through here.” Uhura pointed back towards the front examination room. “Then we have to just keep going.”  
   
“Excellent.” He waved his hand. “Let’s go.”  
   
“I regret ever meeting you,” McCoy muttered, but he allowed Jim to steer him out of the doorway all the same.  
   
“Did you have a chance to see what killed the guy in the other exam room?” Jim asked, as they passed it.  
   
“No.” McCoy’s lips were pursed. “All I could tell you is, first sweep of the tricorder said nothing. You want anything more than that, we’d need to do some kind of autopsy, or get it in the full-body scanner.”  
   
Jim thought about it. “Do you think it would help?”  
   
McCoy stopped walking. He placed a hand on Jim’s elbow, causing him to halt as well. He looked at McCoy in confusion.   
   
“What is it?”  
   
McCoy said quietly, “Jim. You’ve got to remember—we’re not Starfleet anymore.” Unbidden, Jim’s jaw tightened. McCoy continued, “It isn’t our job to figure out what happened to these poor saps. We find someone who needs our help, sure, we lend a hand, but the rest?” He clapped Jim on the shoulder. “Vulcan’s probably looking for this ship anyway. Best we can do is send out a communication for them and hope they won’t begrudge us some of the equipment Scotty’s already stolen.”  
   
Jim ran a hand through his hair. “I know, I know,” he said finally. He snuck a glance at Uhura, who walked a few feet in front of them. “I just—” He exhaled, long and low. “Habit, I guess.”  
   
McCoy’s voice was gentle. “Yeah,” he said. “I get it.” He squeezed Jim’s shoulder. “Some habits are hard to break.”  
   
Jim nodded. “We’re going to have to do something with that Spock guy, though,” he said. “We can’t just,” he gestured to the ship around him, “even if we make a call to the Vulcan authorities, we can’t just leave him here to wait for them to pick him up.”  
   
McCoy grunted. “I had a feeling you’d say that.” He began to walk again, boots echoing lightly on the polished floor. “Our sickbay isn’t exactly equipped for frozen passengers.”  
   
“We could unfreeze him.”  
   
McCoy wrinkled his nose. They walked on.  
   
Unlike the other labs that Jim had passed earlier, with their tidily marked samples and locked doors, it became immediately clear that there was something different about lab eleven.   
   
“Well, this doesn’t look good,” McCoy said, eyes widening as they abruptly stopped walking. The doors to the lab weren’t so much ‘unlocked’ as they were ‘totally removed’, with a large, vaguely door-shaped hole where they should have been. Further along the corridor, they spotted twisted pieces of scrap metal, mangled and crushed at odd angles. A stuttering light flooded from the entryway of the lab out in the hallway, causing strange shadows to cast and flicker on their faces. Aside from their breathing, the entire scene was utterly silent.   
   
“Leonard,” Uhura said quietly. “Please tell me you know exactly what kind of virus can rip a steel door off its hinges and fling it across the room.”  
   
McCoy swallowed. “I hate to be a disappointment,” he said back, voice just as quiet. “But I can’t think of a damned thing.”  
   
“Come on,” Jim said. He pushed forward.    
   
Blood.  
   
That was the first thing Jim thought when he stepped into lab eleven. It had dried, stained, congealed on the floor, the walls, pooling beneath the bodies scattered around the room. There were wide gouges, scratches in the walls, the tables, like something wild had gone after the place with a vengeance. He took another step forward and beneath the heavy boots of his space suit, felt something crunch. He lifted his foot and saw clay shards.  
   
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McCoy muttered.   
   
Jim had seen a lot of unholy things during his time as a soldier in Starfleet, particularly during the war, but he still had to take a breath and concentrate on calming his roiling stomach. “God damn it,” he said. “Fucking hell.”  
   
Behind him, he heard Uhura make a choking noise and swear even more violently. He turned to McCoy. “Bones,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he was whispering. “What could have done this?”  
   
Way ahead of him, McCoy already had his tricorder out and whirring. His face bore an expression of seriousness that Jim rarely saw outside of the sickbay. He crouched down next to the closest body, passing it over the torso, the arms, the back of the head.  
   
“No real wounds,” he muttered. “Scratches, bruises, but nothing that could kill a man.” He turned to look up at Jim, who kneeled down next to him.  
   
“What do you mean?” Done with being abused for the day, his left knee screamed, but he ignored it. “How is that possible? There’s blood everywhere.”  
   
But McCoy was moving his head side to side. “His nose,” he said. “His ears.” He made to reach out. After a second’s consideration however, he dipped his hand into the supplies at his belt instead. He pulled out a pair of disposable blue gloves, and snapped them on. Then, grabbing the cloth-covered, blood-stained shoulder of the corpse, he rolled it over.   
   
Jim was hard put to control the rapid thrumming of his heart. Face to face with the body, he felt a particularly sharp horror pierce him when he took in the expression on the man’s face. Even with the skin withered near to mummified by the Vulcan-dry, sterile conditions of the lab, it was obvious: the mouth was stretched wide and gruesome, long scratches, the perfect fit for fingernails, marred his cheeks. Where his eyes should have been there was nothing but empty sockets, the surrounding skin ripped with scratches and with flecks of dried blood.   
   
“He must have gouged them out.” McCoy met Jim’s gaze. “Jim,” he said, “whatever killed this man, he must have been in horrible pain.”  
   
“Jesus,” Jim said. He pressed his fist to cover his mouth. “What could do something like this?”  
   
“They’re all like that,” Uhura said. She was further into the room than the other two. She stopped to examine one of the laboratory benches. It was an eggshell white that would’ve been appealing if not for the smears of dried green blood on the edges. “There’s a panel here.” She pressed something on it.   
   
A square of blue light shone into the center of the table. Startled, Uhura stepped back. Jim and McCoy quickly got to their feet. The light expanded, covering approximately a third of the bench’s length, and the entirety of its width. It rose from the bench to hover about a hand’s with directly above it, coalescing into something that almost could have passed for solid, if not for the peculiar blue shimmer and the faint crackle of electricity.   
   
Uhura turned to look at them, eyes wide. “Captain,” she said, “this is a containment field.”  
   
“Yes,” Jim murmured, moving towards her, and it. They gazed upon it together, the blue light playing off both their faces. “I would say that it certainly is.”  
   
McCoy followed them, his own eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘containment field?’”  
   
“Exactly what she said, Bones. It’s a forcefield. To contain things.” Jim was still staring.   
   
McCoy glared at him. “What kind of ‘things’?” he pressed. When Jim didn’t answer, he said again, “What kind of things?” a beat. “Jim!”  
   
“Huh?” At the sound of his name, Jim snapped out of whatever entrancement he had been held by. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “What were you saying?”  
   
McCoy’s whole face twitched violently, but all he said was, “The containment field, Jim.”  
   
“Oh.” Jim looked at it. “This is what they have in the warp core,” he said. “To keep the matter and antimatter separate.” His lips were curled in a frown. He rubbed his thumb over his chin in thought. “It sure isn’t a normal thing to have in a lab that’s not specifically to do with warp engineering. I can tell you that much.”  
   
“There isn’t a damn normal thing about this lab in the first place. Whatever happened, it was pretty far outside the region of ‘normal’ as far as I’m concerned.”   
   
“I don’t know, Bones.” Jim exhaled. Another look at the containment field, and he shook his head. “I couldn’t even begin to try to tell you what they were doing in here.”  
   
“Containing something,” Uhura said wryly. McCoy scoffed.   
   
“No shit. Seems they didn’t do a very good job.” He gestured to the bodies littering the floor. He glanced at Jim. “You said that thing’s for the warp core?”  
   
Jim folded his arms. “They must’ve been using it for something else. If there was uncontained antimatter floating around the lab, I think we’d have some more immediate problems.”   
   
McCoy huffed. He got up from his crouch next to the first body, and started examining its neighbor. “Might just be a matter of opinion, Jim, but this looks like a pretty immediate problem to me.”  
   
He received a quelling frown for that. “You know what I mean. Whatever they were using the field for, it was probably unorthodox.”  
   
“We might ask Scotty,” Uhura offered. She left the table, giving the containment field a wide berth. “He does deal with these things.”  
   
Jim took in a deep breath. “We need to figure out what happened.”  
   
“I don’t know,” said McCoy. “I’m fine with calling the Vulcans and letting them figure this mess out.”  
   
“Bones.” Jim fixed him with a firm look. “You said it yourself, we might be contaminated. We can’t risk bringing something back to the ship.”  
   
McCoy put his hands on his hips. “I’m telling you. It is a bad idea to wake up that popsicle.”  
   
“No,” Jim said. “I mean, yes. I get that. I’m not going to rule it out entirely, but we’ll leave that for our last resort.” He twisted to look at Uhura. “There was a computer terminal in the sick bay. If it’s working, I should be able to get us back into the ship’s memory banks. Let’s see if we can’t figure out what they were trying to do here.”  
   
Uhura nodded. “You don’t want to go back up to the bridge?”  
   
“No,” said Jim. “I’ll comm Sulu, let him know what we’re up to. If there _is_ some kind of contamination, I don’t want to risk spreading it until we can figure out what we’re up against.” He glanced around again, his mouth settling into a thin line as he took in the scratches, the bodies, the blood. “For now, let’s just get the hell out of this lab.”  
   
They returned to the sickbay, the short journey an even more cautious one than their initial foray to lab eleven. It hadn’t escaped their notice that, rather than a virus, the scratches that had been on the wall and the mangled state of the hardware could have been the handiwork of some kind of animal. If that turned out to be the case, not a one of them was particularly interested in coming face to face with it in a deserted corridor.  
   
Now that’d he had seen the mess in lab eleven, Jim could see how whatever had happened there, held some echo in the damage to the sickbay, though it was nowhere near as acute. There was one functioning computer terminal. After comming Sulu, who was back down to pilfering engineering under Scotty’s watchful eye, Jim settled himself to breaking into the ship’s computer system as efficiently as possible. When he was through, he handed it off to Uhura, who began scouring for records.   
   
With nothing else to do but wait, Jim joined McCoy, who was up to his knees in sickbay supplies. He had repurposed a gurney, and was busy loading several boxes onto it.   
   
“You sure you don’t want to just take a couple of these biobeds, too?”   
   
“You think you’re joking but if I could get this Vulcan tech to cooperate with our rust bucket, you bet your ass I’d take those beds.” He shoved another box at Jim. “Put this in the cart.”  
   
Jim peeked inside. “Gloves?”   
   
McCoy glowered at him. “If it’s useful, we take it.” Jim put the box on the cart.   
   
“Hey,” he said, “did you see if they had any—” but he was interrupted by Uhura calling across the room.  
   
“Captain?” she said, sounding somewhat distressed. “Jim?”  
   
Exchanging glances with McCoy, he said, “Keep going through this stuff.” Brushing off his hands, he went over to where she stood, bent over in front of the computer terminal. “What’s going on?”  
   
She turned to him, pushing back. “Take a look,” she said.   
   
Jim’s brows twitched together. “Uhura, you know I can’t read Vulcan,” he began, but stopped when he saw what she was pointing at. There was the date. There was the title. And the rest of the document was—  
   
“Blank,” said Uhura. “They’re all like that.” She began to click through several others. “Nothing.”  
   
Jim swore softly. “They’re all like this?”  
   
“Every one that I’ve seen.”  
   
Resisting the urge to slam his fist onto the console, Jim turned away. “Damn it,” he said feelingly.  
   
“What’s going on?” McCoy stepped up to join them. Jim waved at the computer, jaw ticking.  
   
“It’s all gone,” he said. “They wiped it.” He took in a long, calming breath. “Whatever they were doing here,” he said, bracing himself against the terminal, “they sure as hell didn’t want anyone knowing about it.”  
   
“Damn,” said McCoy. He shook his head. “They really weren’t messing around, were they?”  
   
Uhura finished clicking through the documents. “I can’t believe they had the time to wipe these.”  
   
“You can’t recover them?” McCoy said to Jim.  
   
“I don’t know,” sighed Jim. “And if I could, it would certainly take me a hell of a lot longer than it did just to get into the system.”  
   
“Hmph.” McCoy crossed his arms. “What kind of secrets did these guys need to keep so badly?”  
   
Pushing aside his irritation, Jim tried to think. “If they were doing something dangerous and they had their evacuation procedure already planned out in case things went wrong, they might’ve had something. I don’t know, a program waiting to wipe everything. Just in case.”  
   
“We don’t know that they were doing something.” Uhura leaned against the computer terminal. “This could’ve been something external.”  
   
“Would that account for the wiped records though?” McCoy countered.   
   
Jim let out a breath. He looked at McCoy. “Only one way to find out,” he said. McCoy immediately blanched.   
   
“Come on, Jim!”  
   
“Damn it, Bones.” Jim huffed. “You think I don’t get that this is dangerous? I get it. We could be waking up a lunatic or, I don’t know, patient zero.” He indicated the sickbay around them. “But whatever it is—or was, I guess—chances are, we’re already exposed. There could be something hiding on this ship, just biding its time until we let down our guard. We just don’t know. We can’t risk.” He stopped, shaking his head. “We can’t risk the people still on the _Bounty_.”  
   
After a very long pause, McCoy said wearily, “You want to do this here, then.”  
   
Jim nodded. “You think the equipment’s up to the task?”  
   
“Hell,” McCoy sighed. He let his gaze wander over the sickbay. “Honestly, they’re better equipped than we are. Especially with all this Vulcan stuff.” He looked at the gurney he’d co-opted for the supplies. “I think I saw another one of these. We can bring him in here. Let me see if I can’t find some goddamn sedatives and some, I don’t know, whatever Vulcans use for adrenaline.”  
   
“Sedatives?”  
   
McCoy’s nostrils flared. “What, if he turned out to be violent, what were you going to do, shoot him?”  
   
“Uh…” Jim conspicuously drew his hand away from the phaser at his belt.  
   
McCoy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I can see you’ve thought this through.”  
   
Ignoring the jab, Jim turned to Uhura. “I need you to craft a message to the Vulcan High Council,” he said. “Use your old Starfleet access code for all I care. They need to get the message.”  
   
“Got it.”  
   
“If you can’t send it direct from here, I want you to get on the line with Scotty, maybe walk him through the best relays to bounce it through so they get it ASAP.” He pressed his lips together, feeling like he’d forgotten something.   
   
“You should call Sulu again.”  
   
“Shit,” Jim said. “I should call Sulu again.” He reached for his communicator.   
   
“You think you can wake him up?” Uhura asked McCoy quietly, as Jim briefed Sulu on the most recent development.   
   
“Oh, I can wake him up.” McCoy finished laying out a final hypospray next to the cleanest looking biobed. He tapped at it, and it rolled slightly, revealing Standard lettering below the larger, Vulcan print. _Cortoline_. “But I sure as hell don’t take any responsibility for what happens after that.”  
   
“And done.” Jim snapped his communicator shut. “I told Sulu to stay in range but not to come here. We don’t need him exposed too.”  
   
“The whole ship’s probably exposed,” McCoy muttered. Jim pretended not to hear.  
   
“Are you ready?”  
   
“As I’ll ever be.”  
   
Jim smiled, but the expression was anything but happy. “Let’s go get our boy, then.”  
   
Rather than a gurney, Uhura had discovered a large, two-wheeled hand cart, and that is what they took with them into the other room. McCoy checked over the cryopod, making sure it was functioning on its own rather than on the ship’s power. When the system was cleared to his satisfaction, they heaved the cryopod holding the survivor onto the cart. With Uhura and McCoy standing by in case of disaster, Jim took hold of the handle, tipped it, and began to drag the cart, now loaded, back into the main sickbay.  
   
“Damn, this thing’s heavy,” Jim panted, as he pulled to a stop next to the biobed that McCoy had selected.   
   
“Stop whining, this was your idea.” McCoy pointed to the biobed. “Let’s get it up here.”  
   
Jim eyed the biobed. “That’s awfully high.”   
   
“Lift with your legs,” McCoy advised.   
   
“Yes, thank you, Doctor,” Jim grunted as the three of them lifted the cryopod onto the biobed. It dropped with a thunk, and for a moment, Jim was concerned about just how much weight the bed could take, but the Vulcan engineering lived up to its hype.   
   
“Now, step back.”  
   
Jim moved back hastily. For good measure, he held his hands behind his back. “What are you going to do?”  
   
“These things usually have an unfreezing sequence.”  
   
“And you know it?”  
   
“I’m guessing.”  
   
“You’re _guessing_?”   
   
“Jesus, Jim, it’s not like these things are common. What did you think I was going to do?”  
   
“Well—” Jim scratched the back of his neck, expression sheepish.  
   
“Nyota, could I borrow you for a moment? Which one of these says ‘initiate’?”  
   
“Oh my god.”  
   
“It’s this one.”  
   
“Perfect, thank you.” Armed with his tricorder in one hand, with a selection of dubiously acquired hyposprays piled in the tray at his side, McCoy sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Here we go,” he muttered. He began entering a sequence of keys into the code pad. As Jim watched, one of the five lights stopped blinking green and lit up blue instead. McCoy jabbed something on the pad, and a second light swapped over to blue. McCoy’s attention was wholly on the cryopod, so Jim stealthily moved closer for a better look. A third light turned blue.   
   
A quiet beeping sound began to emit from the cryopod. “What,” Jim started.  
   
McCoy held his tricorder aloft. “Heart rate’s up,” he said.   
   
“Is that bad?”  
   
“Not now, Jim,” McCoy said tersely. He pressed something else on the pad, there was an audible click, and the transparent cover began to slide back, revealing the man’s face.  
   
Jim could feel the cold press of the formerly cryogenic air emanating from inside. The man’s eyes were still closed, but as the dry, recycled air of the ship hit his skin, his whole body shuddered, and he opened his mouth to gasp a long breath. He choked on it, coughed, and then his body began to shake violently.   
   
“He’s seizing!” shouted McCoy. “Jim—hold him down!” He reached for a hypospray.   
   
Jim immediately leaned down to press his weight against the man’s shoulders. For someone who’d been frozen for more than a year, he was surprisingly strong. His body convulsed, Jim barely avoiding an arm to the face.  
   
“Hold him, damn it!”   
   
“I’m trying!”  
   
Swearing, McCoy pressed a hypospray to the man’s neck. The shuddering slowly receded. McCoy exhaled. “There—”  
   
The man’s eyes snapped open. He stared straight at Jim, chest heaving. It was the kind of stare that saw right through a person, cataloguing a hundred things at once. Jim repressed a shiver.  
   
“He might not be lucid,” McCoy said in an undertone at Jim’s elbow. He raised his voice, directing it to the stranger. “My name is Doctor Leonard McCoy. We found you aboard your ship. Can you understand me?”  
   
The Vulcan’s eyes fluttered, then tracked until he found McCoy. “No,” he rasped.  
   
Well, that certainly didn’t sound very promising, Jim had a moment to think, before the Vulcan’s face, already pale, went dead white. His expression tightened, and then he was arching up off the bed, mouth open wide in a piercing scream.   
   
“Jesus _Christ!_ ” McCoy barked. “Hold him, hold him!” He jabbed a second hypospray into the man’s neck.   
   
As Jim pressed down on the Vulcan’s shoulders for all he was worth, Uhura came to help him on the other side. Together they held him down as he thrashed and cried out.  
   
“Bones, what’s wrong with him?”  
   
“Hell if I know!” McCoy snatched up the tricorder from where he had discarded it on the tray next to the used hyposprays. “His brain functions are off the charts—”  
   
“You must put me back,” the man gasped. “You must—you _must_.”  
   
“Are you out of your mind?” McCoy snarled, and swore as the man’s entire body went rigid and began to shake. “Shit.”  
   
The Vulcan’s hand reached up to grasp Jim’s hand where he was still holding him. His grip was vicelike. Startled, Jim tried to jerk away. The Vulcan, eyes wild, said to Jim, voice hoarse from disuse and screaming, “You must put me back—it’s not safe—”  
   
Despite himself, Jim leaned in. “What’s not safe? What do you mean?”  
   
_“It_ isn’t—” He threw his head back in another scream, but didn’t let go of Jim’s wrist. His grip was so strong, Jim felt the bones in his wrist grind together.   
   
“Hey,” he said, laughing weakly, “take it easy.” Damn, his wrist felt like it was on fire. “Ow,” he whispered. “Damn.” His tongue felt curiously heavy.  
   
The fire had traveled, spread up his arm. Both temples began to throb.  
   
The Vulcan’s eyes widened in something that might have been panic. “No,” he whispered.   
   
“Jim, are you all right?” Uhura was staring at him.  
   
“My…hand,” said Jim. “My—my arm.” The Vulcan had let go. He tried to lift it away, but found that he couldn’t. He tried to take a step, and his legs were numb. He lifted his head to look at McCoy, but his head wouldn’t lift.  
   
The Vulcan, now clearly in a panic, surged upward and dragged Jim down. His voice was the clearest it had been as he said urgently, “Doctor, it is imperative that you sedate us. Both of us.”  
   
“Now, wait just a damn minute. What have you done to him?”  
   
“Now, Doctor!” the Vulcan snapped. Jim was finding it hard to breath now, like there was a hand on his throat squeezing the life from him. The Vulcan met his gaze. “Forgive me,” he said, and pressed his fingers to Jim’s face.  
   
And Jim  
   
            Was  
             
                        Falling.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 


	4. Chapter 4

He startled awake to the calm chirping of birds. Wren, sparrow, chickadee. He could smell new soil beneath his body, warmed by the summer sun, felt the wind ruffling through his hair, and the trickle of sweat along the back of his neck. He inhaled fresh, unrecycled air, rife with the sweetness of young corn, earthy undertones crumbling beneath his fingertips.  
   
Jim opened his eyes and sat up.  
   
He knew this field. He would’ve known it by scent and sound alone, hadn’t needed the sight of the soft light shining through broad, green leaves, splattering down to pattern his body in stripes of sun and shade. There was dirt on his back. As he got to his feet, Jim brushed it off, a muscle memory from the years spent here, lying in the fields, thinking, reading, dreaming about the future.  
   
The roof of the farmhouse was visible beyond the stalks of August corn. Jim walked toward it. His bare feet left fine imprints of his toes in the dark brown, loamy soil. His fingertips brushed past long, unfurled leaves dangling waist height off the stalks. His muscles felt sleep-warm and supple, no ache between his shoulder blades from lying on the ground, drowsing the day away.  
   
Jim frowned. That _was_ what he had been doing, wasn’t it?  
   
The porch steps creaked beneath his feet. He made sure to mind the nail head sticking out on the second step. The swing was there, wood worn pale grey by years of rain and sun. It was empty, pushed only by the light breeze trickling from the west. Jim reached a calloused hand out to one of the chains and stilled it.  
   
The front door was never locked. Wasn’t much point, out here in the sticks. Nothing worth stealing, aside from a homemade quilt or two. The door swung open easily under his hand. The interior was dark and cool. He could hear the _drip, drip_ from the leaky faucet in the kitchen. (Grandma’d been telling him to fix that all summer).  
   
“Hello?”  
   
No one answered. Jim frowned and took another step inside. It was reaching late afternoon, the light painting the sky pale pink and gold to the west. There should have been sounds coming from the kitchen: sizzling, chopping, humming. Even the antique radio, perched on top of the counter in a place of honor next to the hand-painted, cow-shaped, salt and pepper shakers, was off.  
   
Heedless of his dirty feet, Jim walked into the kitchen.  
   
“No,” he said, stilling at the sight that greeted him. “No!” He dropped to his knees, not even registering the sharp pain that radiated up his legs as his kneecaps made harsh contact with the unforgiving linoleum. He reached out a hand, clasped his grandmother’s still shoulder, felt the soft summer cotton under his palm.  
   
She wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing! Jim’s own breaths came in quick, awful pants. He fumbled for his phone, for anything.  
   
“Help,” he quavered. His voice was higher than he remembered. “Help—Grandma you can’t—what—” He touched his fingers to her throat, felt nothing. There was a warm wetness on his cheeks. He sat back on his heels. She was cold. She was cold already. How long had she been lying here? How long, while he wiled away the hours in the field, doing nothing, wasting time…  
   
She might have called for help. She might have slipped and called for help and he had been so selfish, so stupid, he never even heard her.  
   
“Help,” he gasped, and it was getting harder to breathe now. This was his fault. This was his fault! He clutched the fabric of her summer dress, wrinkling the petals of the peonies embroidered along her shoulders. He bowed his head, curled up against his grandmother’s unmoving arm, and began to sob in earnest.  
   
“Fascinating.”  
   
At the sound of the voice, Jim lifted his head. A man stood there, his form blurred through Jim’s tears. Jim blinked, swiped at his eyes, and the image cleared. The man was wearing black, form-fitting trousers and a stiff-looking green jacket, closed right over left, with several brass buttons down the side. There was a patch on his left arm that Jim didn’t recognize, some kind of geometric symbol, with a swirl like an eye. His nose was sharp and a little long, his hair a dark, edged cap. His eyebrows slanted oddly above dark brown eyes. His ears were pointed.  
   
“Who—” Jim scrabbled back, his own eyes wide.  
   
The man knelt down. “James Kirk,” he said.  
   
“How do you—how do you know my name?”  
   
The man tilted his head. “You are James Kirk?”  
   
Jim swallowed. “Please,” he said. He plucked at his grandmother’s sleeve. “Please, she—” His voice broke. “I didn’t mean to. I—”  
   
This man, this alien stranger who had appeared like a ghost in his dead grandmother’s kitchen, reached out a hand. Jim flinched back before he could make contact. The stranger paused.  
   
“I…apologize,” he said. “I mean you no harm, but circumstances are such that we must move with haste.”  
   
“Please,” Jim whispered. “I can’t. She—” His nose was dripping, he scrubbed the side of his face. “We have to get help,” he said. “Do you have a phone? Do you have anything?”  
   
“We must leave,” the man repeated.  
   
Jim shook his head. “No!” he said. “You can’t just ask me to leave!” He bit the inside of his cheek, felt the metal-tang of blood on his tongue. The pain brought him clarity. He didn’t know this man. Who did he think he was, just barging in here, not even bothering—not even _trying_ to help them? “Who are you?” he demanded.  
   
The man regarded him through dark, steady eyes. “I am Spock.”  
   
Something niggled at the back of Jim’s brain. “Spock?” he said slowly. He frowned. “I don’t know you.” He looked down at the still form in front of him. “I don’t know you,” he whispered.  
   
“James Kirk,” said Spock. “I apologize. I respect your grief.” he indicated the quiet, dirty kitchen, the dripping faucet, the antique radio, the body on the ground. Before Jim could stop him, he reached out a hand, long fingers splaying gently along the side of Jim’s face. “But this is not real.”  
   
The touch was like a shockwave. Jim sucked in a breath, heat hitting him like a solid wall. He shot open eyes he didn’t remember closing, streaming with tears as he was jerked from the dim of the farmhouse kitchen, to somewhere where brightness screamed from above, bounced off of shining surfaces like mirrors, light overwhelming and inescapable.  
   
“What is this?” he cried, trying to shield his eyes.  
   
“ _Alem Haulat_ ,” came Spock’s voice. “Hurry, James Kirk.”  
   
Jim felt a strong tug on his wrist. It pulled him sidelong, he felt like his bare arms were scraping along millions of tiny rough grains, like the skin of a shark. And then—the very odd sensation of falling sideways, squeezed through a small hole, like a gap in the universe and—  
   
The calm and silent breath of the desert.  
   
His lungs were working again. Jim stumbled and dropped to all fours, chest heaving, head spinning, scrubbing at his eyes. His body felt larger now, sturdier. A man’s body. He patted his face for damage and felt the scratchiness of a day without a shave. There was blistering sandstone beneath his fingernails. Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades, pooling at the small of his back.  
   
Spock had let go of his wrist as soon as they’d made it…wherever it was that they had made it. He now stood a respectful distance away, near the edge of a vast cliff. His body was a slim silhouette, backlit by a large red sun halfway to dipping below the horizon.  
   
Jim swallowed. The spinning in his stomach was starting to subside. He lifted his head, rasping, “What—what happened? Where are we? Who are you?”  
   
Spock turned to him. “This is Mount Seleya.” He indicated the expanse in front of them. Red-orange rocks eroded into smooth spires from millennia of wind. Below them, flat, bare plains stretched out as far as the eye could see, scattered with spots of dark red scoria and black basalt. A harsh, hot wind blew over them. Jim coughed as the dust entered his lungs.  
   
“What?” he croaked.  
   
“Mount Seleya,” Spock repeated. “Vulcan.”  
   
“We’re on _Vulcan_?”  
   
“You misunderstand me.” Spock approached him. Jim didn’t move back this time, but he did heave himself gracelessly to his feet. His limbs felt heavy.  
   
Jim glared. “Well then, enlighten me. Who are you?”  
   
Spock lips twitched downward in an almost-frown. “I’ve already told you,” he said. “My name is Spock.”  
   
“Uh huh. You want to maybe elaborate on that?” God, his head hurt. Jim rubbed at his temples. The last few minutes felt like a bad dream, already going fuzzy. Had he been in Iowa? What the hell?  
   
Spock raised an eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”  
   
“The last thing I remember…” Jim winced. Flashes of a linoleum floor, a dark room, a flower-pattered dress. He looked up at Spock. “That was…”  
   
“A memory,” said Spock.  
   
“But,” said Jim. He swallowed. “It didn’t happen like that. I remember, I—that day, I felt like something was wrong, we went to the hospital.”  
   
“Ah,” said Spock, now nodding. “A nightmare.”  
   
Jim stared at him. “What the hell is going on?”  
   
Spock nodded to their surroundings. “I understand you may be experiencing some confusion.”  
   
“Yeah, well reasoned, Einstein. I can see why Vulcans are regarded as some of the greatest minds in the Federation.” Jim rubbed at his temples again. It did little for the headache. In an effort to ignore it, he turned his focus towards the view. There were twinkling lights dotting the valley floor below the cliff. As the sun continued to sink, more and more of them flared to life.  
   
The lines on Spock’s forehead crinkled minutely. “Perhaps if you would permit me to clarify.”  
   
“Please,” Jim said dryly. The longer they stood there, the more solid he felt. Call it intuition or whatever, but something was seriously, seriously wrong. Beneath his skin, the first faint prickling of wariness, of anger, began to twitch. “Do fucking clarify.”  
   
Spock tilted his head. “The aggressive language is unnecessary.”  
   
Jim glared. “Seriously?” He gestured at the cliff, the sun, and the great expanse before them. “Five minutes ago, I was in some weird, mutated version of Iowa, and before that I was in outer space. And now I’m on fucking _Vulcan_?” He pointed at Spock. “You did this, somehow. So yeah, you bet your ass I would like an explanation.”  His eyes widened as another thought occurred to him. “And where the hell is my crew?”  
   
Spock gave him a long flat look. He sighed, “Like the vast majority of your species, you have already begun to make judgements upon a situation when you are clearly not in possession of all of the pertinent facts.”  
   
Was this guy for real? “Hey now—”  
   
“As I was attempting to clarify previously: this is my personal memory of Mount Seleya. You are not _on_ Vulcan, and you were never _in_ Iowa. Your crew is as safe as I have been able to make them, despite your appalling lack of sense in approaching _and boarding_ an unknown vessel. And as for your body and mine, if your human doctor is a credit to his profession, he will have listened to my instructions and we are both, at the very least, completely sedated. At best, he has returned me to stasis, and notified the Vulcan High Council.” He took in a sharp and quick inhale, and jerkily straightened the edges of his jacket, while silence filled the space between them. “I expect we will be retrieved once they are able to expend the resources.”  
   
A long silence followed this pronouncement.  
   
“…yeah,” said Jim finally. “You’re definitely going to have to run all that by me again.”  
   
A fine-boned hand went to Spock’s temple. “You are currently—”  
   
“Why Vulcan?” Jim interrupted. He spread his arms. “Why Mount Seleya?”  
   
Spock pursed his lips. “I spent several years here pursuing my studies, a great deal of it in personal meditation. This memory is very strong and difficult to penetrate.”  
   
Jim took in the view. It certainly looked real. He could feel the end of the day’s heat rising from the ground below, felt the grit of sand beneath his fingernails, could hear an eerie whistle as wind pulled through oddly shaped holes in the rock. “Difficult to penetrate?” he repeated warily.  
   
“Indeed.”  
   
“So, wait—you’re saying I’m in your head? You’re in my head? What? Why?”  
   
“It was necessary.”  
   
“Bullshit!” Jim exclaimed. “You did something to me on that ship. I remember, you put your hands on my face!”  
   
“I saved your life,” said Spock. His eyes flashed. “If I had not performed the meld, you would have been overrun. I removed you from that nightmare, and I brought you here, to my own sanctuary, because this is the safest place I can provide.”  
   
“From _what_?” Jim demanded.  
   
“From—” Spock fell silent. Along the wind, the sharp, faint screech of a raptor’s cry, echoed. He lifted a finger to his lips. “It hunts,” he said quietly. “We must leave. Now.”  
   
“Oh, no, mister.” Jim shook his head. “No way in hell am I going anywhere with you until you explain to me what’s going on.”  
   
Spock grabbed his wrist. Jim always thought you weren’t supposed to feel things in dreams or—whatever weird vision this was—but Spock’s grip was strong enough Jim could feel the fine bones grinding against each other.  
   
“There is no time,” Spock hissed.  
   
“Let go of me!” Jim snapped back. He tried to pull away.  
   
The call sounded again, a shriek that set Jim’s teeth on edge and caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end, dream or no dream.  
   
“James Kirk.” Spock still hadn’t let go of him. He tugged Jim towards him, easy as anything. His eyes were dark pools, narrowed and intent as he lowered his face close to Jim’s ear and said quietly, “If you do not trust me now, we will both pay the price. Do you understand me?”  
   
For most of his life, Jim had made a habit of relying on his wits, his instinct, his gut feeling. Hell, he’d even made a whole career out of it and, when that had gone to hell in a handbasket, a second one. He met Spock’s gaze, and their eyes locked. Something passed between them, a lightening of understanding.  
   
Jim nodded.  
   
In an instant, Spock had them up and running towards the tall mountain rising to the west. Behind them, on the windswept desert plain, lightening flashed, hot and angry.  
   
“Faster!”  
   
Jim didn’t know how the hell he was supposed to _run faster_ when he wasn’t really even running at all, but he tried to pick up the pace. His breath burned in his lungs, and he remembered that Vulcan had less oxygen than Earth. There was a strange high sound building behind them, like the whine before a weapons discharge. Spock shouted, “Down!” and Jim dropped without a second thought.  
   
And kept dropping.  
   
He was somewhere dark. He was falling. It was cold. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breath. He couldn’t breath! He couldn’t—  
   
Jim gasped, opened eyes he didn’t remember closing, shot upright, glancing around wildly. “What—what. What?”  
   
“Mr. Kirk.”  
   
Dazed, Jim met Spock’s gaze again. It was dark, wherever they were, but it felt significantly cooler and damper than the edge of the cliffs at Gol. His skin was almost clammy. He could hear something that sounded like the _drip drop drip_ of water, echoing all around them. His fingers traced the ground and felt cold stone. There was some form of dim light, enough so that he could make out the basic features of Spock’s face, but not all of his expression.  
   
“Where are we?”  
   
Spock moved back a little from where he had been kneeling over Jim’s prone body, crossing his legs, and placing his hands on his knees. Grimacing at the feel of the hard rock beneath, Jim pushed up off of his elbows and sat the rest of the way up. He scooted back about a foot until his spine hit a curved stone wall.  
   
They regarded each other.  
   
“We are still in my mind,” Spock answered, after another moment.  
   
Jim snorted. “Great.” At a loss for anything else more productive to do, he glanced around. They were definitely in some kind of cave. The tops of the walls glowed slightly with some kind of bioluminescent…plant? Algae?  
   
“Worms,” Spock said, in answer to his unasked question. He waved his arm almost casually at the ceiling. “A very rare species on Vulcan. Of caves we have plenty, but the cooler, damper variety, which these particular worms prefer, are substantially rarer.”  
   
Jim’s breath hitched. “Did you just read my mind?”  
   
“It is difficult to avoid.” Spock cocked an eyebrow. “Your mind is very loud, and I am also attempting to muffle it.”  
   
Jim stared at him. “Muffle it?”  
   
“My first sanctuary was breached because of the…chaos, yes. It drew attention.” Spock inclined his head. “If you could also attempt to regulate your thought patterns—I understand that as you are human, this may be difficult for you—but if you could attempt to do so, that would be safest.”  
   
“What?” Jim said faintly. He shook his head. “Also, _no_ , me regulating my thoughts wouldn’t be difficult, it’d be downright impossible. I don’t even know what you mean when you say that!”  
   
Spock gave him a warning look, and Jim lowered his voice.  
   
“I trusted you back there, but you still haven’t explained to me who the hell you really are, what’s going on, and how the hell I even got into this mess.”  
   
“You got into this mess when you boarded my ship without permission and entered a quarantine zone.” Spock’s voice was steely.  
   
“Oh, come on. What the hell were we supposed to do? Just leave you?”  
   
“Yes!”  
   
At the sound of Spock’s raised voice echoing through the cave, they both flinched.  
   
The echoes died away.  
   
Silence.  
   
They both exhaled.  
   
“Yes,” Spock said again, more quietly this time, but just as firm. “You should have contacted Vulcan immediately, not gone investigating an unknown and unsafe vessel.”  
   
“Yeah, sure,” Jim said. “Because the authorities on Vulcan would definitely be first in line to take a call from the human captain of a small-time scrapper ship.” He didn’t mention that he _had_ told Uhura to try to contact Vulcan, though he wasn’t sure if she’d had any success. It didn’t matter, anyway. What was done was done.  
   
For the first time, something about Spock’s voice was unsure. “A scrapper? I don’t understand. You are not a member of Starfleet?”  
   
“What?” said Jim, taken aback. “No.” An old ache that had nothing to do with his physical body, flared to life beneath his breastbone. “No, I’m not. Where’d you get an idea like that?”  
   
Spock steepled his fingers. “Your memories led me to believe you were in Starfleet. An officer.”  
   
“My memories.” Jim snorted. “You’ve just been going through those? Jim Kirk’s greatest hits?”  
   
The tension in Spock’s voice was palpable. “Under the circumstances, it is difficult to keep them out,” he said tightly. “I am trying my best. I have no wish to pry into your life, James Kirk. It is not the Vulcan way to violate another’s privacy in such a manner.”  
   
Jim huffed out a low chuckle. “Not the ‘Vulcan way’ huh? Kind of a weird thing to tell the guy who’s literally in your mind right now.”  
   
“These are extenuating circumstances.” Spock was still watching him. “You are not in Starfleet,” he prompted again.  
   
“I was,” Jim said. He stretched out his leg, and for the first time since the whole weird nightmare began, his knee throbbed. Huh. He hadn’t remembered it hurting when they’d been running from…whatever it was that had Spock so damn freaked. “Not anymore.”  
   
“Why did you leave?”  
   
Jim eyed him right back. “What’s chasing us?”  
   
Spock looked away. Jim waited, counting breaths until Spock’s voice, sounding weary and old for the first time said, “A mistake.”  
   
“A mistake?”  
   
“Yes.”  
   
He did not speak after that. Jim took a guess.  
   
“Your mistake?”  
   
Spock lifted his head to glare at him. “My responsibility,” he said frostily. “A responsibility that your _prying_ has made exponentially more difficult.”  
   
Now that, Jim thought, was patently unfair. “Hey,” he said, pointing. “You’re the one who grabbed my face and dragged me into your mind. I was just standing there trying to help the doctor save your life.”  
   
“You touched me,” Spock said lowly. “You touched—it—” He fell silent again.  
   
Jim was getting really tired of this. Frustrated, he reached out and grabbed Spock’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said sharply. “What’s done is done. I’m involved now, like it or not.  
   
“Yes,” Spock said. He let out a long breath. “I suppose you are.”  
   
Jim was quiet for a moment. The situation was a new one, he had to admit. Maybe if he’d gotten that five-year mission, the one that got scrapped when the war broke out, maybe he would’ve seen something weird of this caliber, but as it was…  
   
“You should start at the beginning.”  
   
Spock gave him a sharp look. “I should, should I?”  
   
Jim’s gaze didn’t waver, but he did let go of Spock’s shoulder. He moved back again, and folded his hands neatly in his lap. He leaned forward. “I propose a trade.”  
   
“Oh?” One of Spock’s eyebrows slowly rose. “Specify.”  
   
The corner of Jim’s mouth quirked up. “An answer for an answer,” he said. In the dark, he wasn’t sure if Spock could see it, but he affixed his most charming grin, just in case.  
   
“I do not believe I follow,” said Spock. Jim could hear the frown in his voice.  
   
“It’s like this,” Jim said. “I want to know what happened to…” he trailed off, glancing around the cave, “…lead us to this, uh, particular situation.” He felt emboldened when Spock inclined his head. “And unless I miss my guess, you’ve been lying on that ship like a popsicle for several months at the very least.” He winked, though he suspected it was wasted on his audience. “I’ll bet you’d like to get caught up on just what the Alpha Quadrant’s been doing in your absence.”  
   
“It seems an illogical trade,” Spock observed, “given that if I so desired, I could simply take the required information from you, whether you willed it or not.”  
   
“Ah,” said Jim boldly, “but this way, I’m giving it freely. No moral grey area.” He hesitated, lips pressed together. Given that he was literally inside Spock’s mind at the current moment, there probably actually _was_ some moral ambiguity somewhere, but he couldn’t think of anything immediately pressing. “What do you say?”  
   
Spock regarded him for long enough that Jim began to wonder if Vulcans didn’t have better night vision than humans. Finally, “Very well,” he said finally. “I will acquiesce to this…trade.”  
   
“Good, good.” Jim rubbed his hands together and offered up a friendly grin. Spock tilted his head, askance. _Definitely better night vision than humans_ , Jim decided.  
   
But Spock wasn’t finished. “However,” he said. “If you refuse to answer a question, then I should also be accorded the same courtesy.”  
   
“Hey now,” Jim protested, “that’s not the point, though. Hell,” he lifted his hands, “we could both refuse to answer questions until the cows come home and then why even bother?”  
   
Spock huffed at him. “Given the nature of the trade you’ve suggested, obviously that would not be the intent.” His voice became more distant. “I was referring to the possibility of more personal questions that perhaps neither of us would prefer to discuss with a relative stranger.”  
   
“Such as?” Jim challenged.  
   
Spock fixed him with a look. “Such as why you are no longer a member of Starfleet.”  
   
Rather than get angry, Jim just snorted. “Everyone knows that,” he said. “Hard to keep a court martial quiet.”  
   
“You were court martialed?” Spock sounded surprised. “Why?”  
   
His jaw worked. “I refused orders from a superior officer,” he said. “They didn’t like that too much.” He patted his knee. “Got a nice little souvenir for it, too.”  
   
“I see,” Spock said slowly. He leaned forward, like he just couldn’t help himself. “What was the nature of—”  
   
“Nuh uh.” Jim wagged a finger at him. “That was one question. My turn.”  
   
“You did not answer the question in its entirety,” Spock argued.  
   
Jim lifted both eyebrows at him. “You didn’t specify,” he returned, and tried not to sound smug. He fancied he could feel Spock glaring at him, though he knew that in reality that was patently ridiculous—a Vulcan wouldn’t be caught dead making that much of an expression in public, he was sure. He said, “My turn.”  
   
Spock sighed. “As you say,” he agreed, though he sounded wary. “Ask.”  
   
It was on the tip of his tongue to try and aim for the heart of it, but then he hesitated. “When we looked through the records on your ship,” he said instead, “we found your personnel files.”  
   
“You must employ someone who is fairly gifted with computing,” Spock observed.  
   
Of course, Jim didn’t deny it. His mouth quirked upward. “Your specialty intrigued me,” he said. “My communications off—” he broke off. “My crewmate, who happens to have an excellent background in communications, told us that the specialty didn’t quite translate to Terran Standard. Would you mind explaining your specialty to me, and also, how you came to chose it?”  
   
Spock regarded him for a moment. “That is not the sort of query I was expecting,” he said finally.  
   
“You’ll find that I’m a man full of surprises, Mr. Spock.”  
   
“Hmmm.” Spock was quiet for a moment, letting instead the _drip, drip_ of the water from the cave fill the air between them. “My field is _tor-tal kashek_ , which can be best translated to ‘physics of the mind’.”  
   
“Sorry, I still don’t understand what that means.”  
   
Spock looked up at the ceiling. “Many Vulcans are, to some extent, gifted with telepathy.” He glanced back at Jim. “Telepathy itself is nothing more than an extension of the ability of the mind to interact with the world outside of it. Do you understand?”  
   
“I suppose,” said Jim doubtfully.  
   
Spock didn’t seem too bothered about his skepticism. “I study the workings of that energy,” he said. “I began with traditional physics of course—mechanical, quantum, beta-quantum, warp physics. But as it turned out, the disciplines of my youth had resulted in an aptitude for _tor-tal kashek_. I decided to specialize.” He let the silence fall again, then said, “Although it is a field in the Vulcan Science Academy, it is not one that, perhaps, my family would have preferred I pursue.”  
   
“Why not?”  
   
Spock tilted his head. “I believe it is my turn to ask a question, Mr. Kirk.”  
   
Jim gaped for a moment, then threw back his head to let out a hearty chuckle. “You’ve beaten me at my own game, Mr. Spock. Well played.”  
   
The interlude into Spock’s career had not been enough to distract him from his previous curiosity. He immediately went on the attack. “What was the nature of the orders that you refused?”  
   
Well, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been expecting it. Jim cranked his neck back and leaned the back of his head against the wall of the cave. “I decided that the lives of some civilians were more important than my ship,” he said to the ceiling. He shrugged. “Starfleet wasn’t exactly pleased to lose an entire Constitution Class vessel during the middle of a war.”  
   
“You sacrificed your vessel?”  
   
“Sacrificed it?” Jim snorted. “Hell, I blew it up myself.”  
   
Both of Spock’s eyebrows shot up at this revelation. “Fascinating,” he said.  
   
Jim laughed, low and ugly. “I’m sure the Klingons thought it was mighty fascinating too.” His smile turned sharp. “I didn’t waste her last, though.” There was something like pride in his voice. “Took out a whole compliment of warbirds with her.”  
   
“I see,” said Spock. He sounded pensive.  
   
“My turn again.”  
   
“Very well.” Spock straightened his shoulders. “Ask.”  
   
Jim grinned. “What’s your favorite color?”  
   
“Excuse me?” Spock said incredulously.  
   
“You heard me.”  
   
“My favorite color.”  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“Vulcans do not have a favorite color,” Spock dismissed. “Such a thing would be illogical.”  
   
“So, I’m illogical.” Jim shrugged. “Indulge me.” He received a very suspicious look for his trouble. “What?”  
   
“Why would you ask such a question?”  
   
“Because,” Jim said, and his mouth curled up. “You’re in my head. Maybe I’m just trying to be friendly.”  
   
Spock stared at him. “That is illogical,” he said plainly.  
   
Jim shrugged. “Maybe I’m trying to get a read on you, then. The way you have on me.”  
   
“You have not trained in the mental disciplines the way I have. And you are human.”  
   
“Maybe,” Jim agreed. “But I can try.”  
   
“Illogical.”  
   
“Just pick a color.”  
   
“I do not wish to.”  
   
“Why not?”  
   
“Because.” Spock was clearly struggling now. “It is frivolous. It is a waste of a question.”  
   
“That’s a little harsh,” Jim objected. He winked. “Come on, Mr. Spock,” he wheedled. “Answer the question. What’s your favorite color?”  
   
“No.”  
   
“I do not believe that’s a color.”  
   
Spock glared. “Do your fellow humans find you this objectionable?”  
   
“Probably.” Jim tapped his fingers on his knees. “Color?”  
   
“Ask a different question.”  
   
“No, I like this one.”  
   
“Please.”  
   
“It’s really not a big deal, Mr. Spock. All you have to do to get your turn is answer the question—”  
   
“Blue,” Spock growled, and then immediately looked horrified. Jim smirked.  
   
“Your turn.”  
   
“Why did you select a career as a scrapper? Surely any commercial venture in need of a former Starfleet captain would have been a better option?”  
   
It looked like Spock wasn’t planning on pulling any of his punches, Jim thought ruefully. Or maybe this was some kind of payback for making him pick an illogical favorite color. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs, to give himself a moment. “Seemed like the best option for keeping us together.” He lifted a shoulder. “Plus, don’t think anyone was going to hire me for anything else in space, and you know how it is.” He smiled. “Once you’ve been out in the black, it’s hard to stay earthbound.” He rubbed the back of his neck when he found Spock studying him. “What?”  
   
“You said ‘us’,” Spock pointed out. “Your family?”  
   
“You know, for a Vulcan, you’re real good at forgetting rules. Whatever happened to one question?”  
   
Spock drew himself up sharply. “I did not forget. I was simply trying to clarify your response.”  
   
“Uh huh.” Jim decided to let him have it. “Fine. No, not my family, but just as good as.”  
   
Spock looked puzzled. “I do not understand.”  
   
He probably really didn’t, either, Jim thought. It wasn’t like Vulcans were known for forming attachments to their fellows. “My crew,” he said. “They came with me.”  
   
Spock actually nodded like he understood. “They were also court martialed?”  
   
“No.” Jim’s gaze slid away. “They left.”  
   
He could feel Spock’s eyes on him, intent, like there was some kind of missing variable in an equation he was trying to solve. “Why?”  
   
“You know, that’s a lot of questions,” said Jim. “Pretty sure it’s my turn by now.”  
   
Spock’s mouth pulled to the side, but he did give an abrupt nod, so Jim figured he was in the clear. He considered for a moment. He’d tried the relaxed approach, but it didn’t look like much was going to get in the way of his Vulcan rescuer’s single-mindedness. Spock certainly wasn’t messing around when it came to getting information out of Jim.  
   
What did he know about Vulcans? Obviously, they were logical. It was said that they couldn’t lie, and every human bureaucrat he’d met who’d had to deal with them had always complained about the lack of respect for the unsaid niceties, the subtleties of politics.  
   
Well, Jim thought. Two could play at that game. If Vulcans appreciated directness, then Jim would give him directness. Time to go on the attack.  
   
“Why is there no record of your ship?”  
   
Spock hesitated. _Bingo_ , thought Jim. “I believe you accessed the ship’s computers? The records are there.”  
   
“Mr. Spock.”  
   
Even in the shadows, Jim could see his gaze dart away. “The Vulcan Council would not be pleased to have this publicized.”  
   
“I wasn’t planning on publicizing it.”  
   
“The fact remains,” said Spock. He exhaled. “The nature of our mission was known only to the Council, the highest echelons of our military, and certain members of the VSA whose expertise were deemed necessary.”  
   
Jim narrowed his eyes. “And which category did you fall into, if I might ask?”  
   
“I believe that is two questions.”  
   
“I’m clarifying,” Jim returned. Spock’s nostrils flared, but he nodded.  
   
“My expertise,” said Spock, “and my military background, together made me an ideal candidate.”  
   
“A top-secret mission involving an expert on psychic phenomena,” Jim mused. He gave Spock a sharp look. “Interesting.”  
   
“It is my turn,” said Spock. When Jim waved at him to continue, he said, steepling his hands together, “To the best of your knowledge, what is the status of my planet?”  
   
“Your planet?” Jim repeated, just to make sure he had heard correctly.  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“You know, we don’t really head that way too often.” Jim lifted his shoulders. “Haven’t heard anything bad though, if that’s what you’re asking. All still there. No trade interruptions. I assume it’s fine.”  
   
“Fine?” Spock was regarding him closely, as if seeking for any falsehood. When Jim nodded, he took a breath. “Very well. That is reassuring.”  
   
“I mean, I guess,” Jim agreed. “I don’t know why you’d be worried about Vulcan, it’s as safe as it’s been since…” He stopped as something occurred to him, and then he said slowly, “What was the mission of your ship?” Spock looked away. Jim nodded as his suspicions were confirmed. “This was something to do with the war,” he concluded, and watched with satisfaction as Spock swallowed. “Whatever you guys were up to, all that secrecy…What, were you building a weapon or something?”  
   
“Is that your question?” Spock asked tightly.  
   
“Sure,” said Jim. _Let’s put that rumor about Vulcan truthfulness to the test._ “Let’s make that my question.” For a moment after he said it, he honestly didn’t think Spock was going to answer. The Vulcan’s face was serene, but his eyes gave away his conflict. But then, contrary to all of Jim’s expectations, Spock dipped his chin and began to speak.  
   
“The Klingon incursion onto our sister planet, though rebuffed, had unnerved many.” Head bowed, he pressed his folded hands to his forehead.  “We were to develop a weapon that would, ideally, prevent such an event from occurring again.”  
   
“A psychic weapon?”  
   
Spock looked up and then away. “As you say.”  
   
“I take it things didn’t go well.”  
   
“There were complications.”  
   
Jim opened his mouth to follow that train of thought, but then reconsidered. He had already pressed his luck with the clarification he’d tagged on. Instead, he sat back, stretching out his legs, and crossed one ankle over the other. He braced himself for the next targeted inquiry into his past misdeeds. “Your turn.”  
   
The response took a moment, like Spock was thinking carefully. “What is your favorite color?”  
   
The words were so unexpected that Jim thought for a moment that he had hallucinated them. “Beg your pardon?”  
   
“Your favorite color,” Spock repeated, very evenly. His eyes, when they lit on Jim, were perfectly neutral.  
   
“Uh…”  
   
“Do you not have one? I was given to believe that most humans do.”  
   
“I mean, yeah,” said Jim. He flushed when Spock regarded him evenly. “You’re doing this on purpose.”  
   
“You will have to clarify,” said Spock. “I am doing many things on purpose.”  
   
Jim scoffed at him, but it lacked any real bite. “Fine, Mr. Spock,” he said. “You win. My favorite color is green.”  
   
“What have I won?” Spock queried. He leaned forward, squinting.  
   
Ah, what the hell, Jim decided. “A question.”  
   
“A second question?”  
   
“You bet.” Jim raised a challenging eyebrow at him. “Go on. Give me your best.”  
   
“That’s very generous of you, Mr. Kirk,” Spock agreed. “What is your favorite food?”  
   
Jim stared. “Okay, now I know you’re doing this on purpose,” he said, pointing at Spock. True to form, his Vulcan companion only blinked.  
   
“Again, Mr. Kirk, if you could clarify—”  
   
“You know perfectly well what I mean, Mr. Spock,” Jim said dryly. “And the answer is—wait, can I give a meal?”  
   
“I suppose it honors the spirit of the exchange.”  
   
“Well then,” said Jim, “not to stereotype myself too much, but I like a nice steak—rare, mind you. And fresh sweet corn. Straight off the stalk at the height of summer. Best thing you’ll ever eat.” He frowned when Spock wrinkled his nose. “What? Don’t like steak?”  
   
“I am a vegetarian.”  
   
“Well, not everybody’s perfect,” Jim sighed. He snickered when Spock just looked confused. “My turn?”  
   
“I believe so.” Spock resettled, hands folded in his lap. Jim didn’t know what exactly Spock was playing at with the sudden softball questions, but what the hell, better a friendly companion than a frigid one. He decided to follow Spock’s lead; maybe if the Vulcan was more relaxed, he’d be more willing to tell Jim what he wanted to know.  
   
“Which subject did you excel at in school?”  
   
“All of them.”  
   
“That’s not funny.”  
   
Spock cocked his head. “It was not intended to be.”  
   
“It is to me,” Jim muttered. He ignored the look Spock sent him. “Fine. What did you excel at _outside_ of school?”  
   
Spock took a moment to ponder that one. In fact, Jim was just about getting ready to declare victory when Spock said, voice softer than before. “Music.”  
   
“Music?” Jim echoed. He’d certainly been expecting something like the Vulcan equivalent of mathletes or the chess club, so this was interesting.  
   
“Yes,” Spock said, nodded. “I play the Vulcan Lyre.”  
   
“Oh,” said Jim. He peered at him curiously. “Are you any good?”  
   
“You did specify ‘excel,’” Spock pointed out.  
   
“Oh, right. You’re absolutely right. Huh. Wow. Music.” He scratched his head. “You know, I don’t think I know very much about Vulcan music.”  
   
“There is a wide variation in genres,” said Spock diplomatically. “I played what could be considered more traditional.”  
   
That, at least, seemed in line with what Jim knew about Vulcans, although the fact that Spock played ‘traditional’ implied that there was some ‘untraditional’ music to be found, and wasn’t that just something. Jim wondered what kind of Vulcan played untraditional Vulcan music. Probably not Spock, Jim mused, and then felt an odd twinge of shame. He’d been making a lot of assumptions about his rescuer, based on nothing but his planet, and some of them had already been proven wrong. He ought to know better.  
   
“Mr. Kirk?” Spock was eyeing him with trepidation. Or maybe it was concern, Jim thought suddenly, and his shame doubled. To cover up the direction of his thoughts, Jim managed a quick grin.  
   
“You should really call me Jim,” he said.  
   
“It makes no difference to me, Mr. Kirk,” said Spock, and ignored the pointed look he got in return. “I believe it is my turn for a question.”  
   
“Yeah,” sighed Jim. He stretched his arms up towards the ceiling of the cave. Oddly enough, he was starting to feel tired. He stifled a yawn. “Ask away.”  
   
“How goes the war?”  
   
Jim stilled. “The war?” he said carefully.  
   
“The war with the Klingons.” Spock’s dark eyes watched him, but his face revealed nothing. “I presume in my…absence, that the Federation has not begun a different one?”  
   
Jesus, he didn’t _know_. Of course he didn’t know. Jim was a fucking idiot. “What day did you—” he didn’t quite know how to put it, so he waved his hand. “You know. End up like this?”  
   
“What do you mean?”  
   
“The stardate. What stardate was it?”  
   
Spock pursed his lips. “The stardate was 2265.37.”  
   
Jim exhaled. “2265.37?” he echoed. “You’re sure?”  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“2265.37,” Jim repeated. He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “Spock,” he said. “It’s 2268.63.” Spock’s eyes widened. Jim could see his entire frame go rigid, his mouth dropping open ever so slightly.  Jim continued, “The war’s over,” and found himself unable to keep looking at Spock, whose entire worldview was clearly collapsing before his very eyes. Instead, Jim focused down at the cave floor. “Treaty was signed two years ago.”  
   
“Two years ago,” Spock said faintly, after a long moment of silence. He did not ask for a more specific date. Jim could tell that he was bracing himself as he said, “Forgive me, if I may ask—who was the victor?”  
   
Jim took a deep breath. “It was a long and dirty war,” he said finally, and met Spock’s gaze. “In my opinion, no one was.”  
   
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vulcan Translation:
> 
> Alem Haulat - 'Salt Mirror' (a made-up mental technique that Spock uses to confuse their pursuers)
> 
> Tor-tal Kashek - 'Physics of the Mind' (a made-up Vulcan field of study that Spock has a doctorate in)


	5. Chapter 5

The air in the cave felt like it had grown beyond heavy to stifling. Spock seemed at a loss, like he didn’t know what he should do with this new, life changing information. Jim sympathized; a man spends most of his adult life fighting a war, and then one day wakes up to find it’s been over for more than two years? How much time had Spock dedicated to fighting the same war, just here in his mind?  
   
“It’s truly over?” Spock said abruptly.  
   
“Well,” said Jim, “it’s talks instead of shootouts, and the Klingons have a consulate down in Frisco, so.” He shrugged. “Better than the alternative, I guess.”  
   
“I see.” Spock still sounded stunned. The fact that Jim could even _tell_ that a Vulcan sounded stunned, made it even more obvious.  
   
“The Andorians got it the worst, I think.” Jim tapped the side of his jaw in thought. “Like magnets for the Klingons.” His grimace showed a hint of teeth. “Don’t know what it is, but they didn’t like to fight the human ships. Seemed to think we weren’t, you know, _worthy opponents_ or whatever.” He waved his hands. The corner of his mouth quirked. “I think they did change their minds eventually on that one,” he said thoughtfully, and looked at Spock. “They have a strange sense of what’s worthy, if you ask me.”  
   
“Indeed.” Spock took a breath. “And Vulcan? You said Vulcan was—” his voice broke slightly, “Vulcan was well?”  
   
Jim held his gaze. “There was one more incursion,” he said. “But it was rebuffed.” He could see the tension melt out of Spock’s shoulders as he spoke. “I wasn’t lying to you. I think Vulcan fared the best out of any of us.”  
   
Spock exhaled. He readjusted his posture, took a moment to straighten out his jacket, and returned his attention to Jim. “Shall we continue the game?”  
   
To be honest, Jim hadn’t expected that. After the talk about the war, he’d figured Spock might want some time to process or, whatever it was that Vulcans did when it came time to reorder large aspects of their mental paradigm. “Are you sure?” he said carefully.  
   
Spock’s gaze didn’t waver. “I still have many questions.”  
   
“If you’re sure.”  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“All right.” Jim wiggled around, trying to find a more comfortable spot on the cave floor. “Is it my turn?”  
   
Spock inclined his head. “I believe so.”  
   
“Right.” Jim had to think a moment. So soon after telling Spock what had to be some pretty startling news, he didn’t really want to freak him out any further by asking directly what happened on the day shit had gone belly up for him. Still. “Hey, what happened to the rest of your crew? We didn’t, uh…” so much for avoiding the topic. Jim cleared his throat. “We didn’t find very many of you.”  
   
Spock set his shoulders. “There was an evacuation protocol in place,” he said. “My fellow crewmembers should have followed it.” His eyebrows pinched together. “If they were not present on the ship, then I must assume that they followed protocol correctly.”  
   
“Why didn’t they send anyone to come rescue the rest of you?” Shit, wait. That was two. Jim smiled apologetically. “Sorry,” he said.  
   
“It is of no consequence,” Spock sighed. “I don’t know the answer.” His voice was quieter. Jim thought he sounded dejected, even. He resisted the urge to lean forward and give his companion a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Vulcans didn’t like touch, he remembered. Spock probably needed space.  
   
“One more question,” Jim decided. “And then…maybe we can take a break?” He wondered if he should aim at faking a yawn. Could one sleep during this kind of…weird…psychic connection…thing? He had no idea.  
   
“Very well.” Spock set his hands in his lap. He fixed Jim with a weirdly intensive gaze. “I understand that you and your crew are scrappers. What exactly were you planning to do to my ship?”  
   
_Should’ve expected that one_ , Jim thought ruefully. Stalling for a moment to think through his answer, he tucked his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Well,” he started, “maybe I should start at the beginning.”  
   
“That would seem logical, yes.”  
   
“I’m no longer in Starfleet.”  
   
“I am aware,” Spock said impatiently.  
   
“Uh huh.” Jim cracked a grin at him. “Anyway. A guy’s got to eat, Mr. Spock, even if the job’s not as glamorous.”  
   
“You’re stalling.” The intensity in Spock’s eyes hadn’t wavered, but there was a twitch of petulance in the quirk of his brow.  
   
Jim blew air out of the corner of his mouth. “Come on, I told you we’re scrappers,” he said, with an airy flick of the wrist. When Spock’s expression didn’t change, Jim elaborated. “That means that old ships, abandoned settlements—oftentimes they have something of value, something we can sell. Or, hell,” he snorted, “something we can use to keep our own ship running.”  
   
Spock squinted at him. “You intended to steal items of value from my ship.”  
   
“It’s not really stealing if it’s already been abandoned,” Jim argued.  
   
“Your logic is faulty.”  
   
“I certainly don’t think so.”  
   
Nostrils flaring, Spock tried a different track. “Why did you believe my vessel was abandoned?”  
   
Jim shot him an incredulous look. Spock frowned.  
   
“Why?”  
   
“No hails, no records—” Jim ticked off with his fingers. He fixed Spock with a look. “You were the only one alive on that ship, Spock.” He shook his head. “And I’m sorry, but I’ve got a responsibility to my crew. An opportunity like your big empty ship wasn’t one we could pass up.”  
   
“I see.” Spock frowned. He looked like he was thinking the whole thing over, before he let out a reluctant sigh and said dryly, “Is there anything in particular I should expect to find misplaced when this situation,” he gestured to their surroundings, “has been resolved?”  
   
Jim held back a startled grin. “Well,” he said, aiming for mock-serious, “the medical supplies might need to be, ahem, restocked. Bones was very adamant about your pharmacy.”  
   
“Bones,” Spock said flatly.  
   
“Ship’s doctor. McCoy. Also formerly of the Fleet.” Jim waved the question away. He didn’t think they were really playing the game now, anyway. Since he’d told Spock about the war, something seemed to have shifted. The air felt less tense, anyway. He winced as something else did occur to him. “Also, you might be missing a dilithium crystal or two.”  
   
And there went the eyebrows. “Or two,” Spock said carefully. “That is vague even for a human, Mr. Kirk.”  
   
“My engineer isn’t exactly into specifics.”  
   
Spock huffed. “An odd trait in an engineer.”  
   
Jim let loose a bark of laughter. Spock’s forehead wrinkled.  
   
“I don’t see what is so amusing.”  
   
Jim just shook his head. “I didn’t think Vulcans told jokes.”  
   
“There is no need to be offensive, Mr. Kirk,” Spock said primly.  
   
Jim smiled at him again, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve been over this. You’re in my head. At least call me Jim.”  
   
Spock inclined his head. “If you continue on insisting,” he said, voice dry. “I suppose I have little choice, Jim.”  
   
“That’s more like it,” Jim said approvingly. He stretched, but overplayed it, to see if he could gauge Spock’s reaction. “I’m tired,” he said. “Is that weird?”  
   
“What do you mean?”  
   
“Like, can you sleep like this? I feel like I could sleep.”  
   
“I do not. Perhaps a human may. I do not believe it has been tested.”  
   
“Wait.” Jim blinked. “Go back. You don’t sleep?”  
   
“Not in this state, no.”  
   
“But you said you’ve been like this for three years.”  
   
“As you say,” Spock acknowledged with a nod.  
   
Jim had a sudden, horrified feeling. “How?”  
   
Spock regarded him with an oddly serene expression. “If I sleep,” he said. “If I relax my guard, then I risk…” he trailed off, face shuttering. “The safety of this place is dependant on my will. If I lose my concentration, it will collapse.”  
   
“So, if you sleep?”  
   
Spock just looked at him. Jim swallowed.  
   
“Spock,” he said, “what’s out there?”  
   
For the flash of a second, Spock actually looked like he was going to answer. But before he could do so, there was—and Jim could think of no other word for it—an earthquake.  
   
“What the hell?” said Jim, voice louder than he’d intended it to be. Spock looked up sharply as the ground began to shudder. A split second later, and Spock had shut his eyes, taking a deep breath, and adopting an expression of extreme concentration. From the floor and the ceiling, poofs of dust began to arise. The air felt like it was starting to heat up.  
   
_This is just some kind of mental construction_ , Jim tried to remind himself. _This isn’t real. It’s an illusion. It’s all in my head_. It didn’t help.  
   
“No,” said Spock. He was starting to look strained now, a vein standing out at his neck, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.  
   
“Spock?” Jim ventured, worriedly watching as the light from the glow worms began to flicker and fade. “What’s happening?”  
   
“It seeks,” Spock said through gritted teeth. “But I will not let it—I will not!”  
   
Standing there, in a situation he knew nothing about, with any enemy he had no obvious way to fight against, Jim felt very small. He flexed his fingers, but otherwise didn’t move. He didn’t know what to do. Would touching Spock help him or distract him? Should he speak to him? Should he ignore him? Try to focus the way Spock was doing? There was a hurricane of possibilities and not a definite answer among them. The cave continued to rumble. The air continued to heat.  
   
From Jim’s limited vantage point, Spock’s resistance looked like he was giving it everything he could, his jaw set stubbornly, his knuckles white. The sight of it kindled something in Jim. Licking his lips, Jim said, “Spock, there must be a way I can help you.”  
   
But Spock was either too far gone or too focused to care. He continued to concentrate, grinding his teeth, rocking back and forth with the tension of whatever he was doing.  
   
 “Please,” Jim pleaded. “Tell me there’s something!” Desperate as the cave rumbled around them, he moved to grab Spock’s shoulder. But as he reached out his hand, suddenly there was nothing there. Jim gasped, but there was no sound. He opened his eyes, but there was no light. The cave was gone. Spock was gone.  
   
And Jim was alone.  
   
   
#  
   
   
He was on the bridge.  
   
“Captain,” said Uhura. She was sitting at her console, red uniform crinkled as she swiveled to face him. “The Klingons are refusing to respond to hails.”  
   
Jim snapped to attention immediately. “Hail them again,” he ordered. “We’re providing escort for a neutral hospital vessel—even the Klingons have to respect the rules of engagement.”  
   
Gary Mitchell, standing to the right of him, pressed his lips together. “I’m starting to doubt it,” his number one muttered. Jim sent him a quelling look.  
   
“Our orders are not to engage,” he told his bridge crew at large. “We are to ensure the safety of the _Florence_ and nothing else.”  
   
“And if the Klingons fire first?”  
   
That was Gary again. Jim tried to keep a rein on his temper. He’d picked Gary to be his number one _because_ they often argued tactics. The point of a first officer was to balance the captain, make him think, make him absolutely sure about the best course to take.  
   
That didn’t mean the balancing act wasn’t sometimes really annoying.  
   
“Let’s not go borrowing trouble, Gary,” he said. He tried not to make it sound like a rebuke, though it was. “They haven’t fired yet.”  
   
“Two more warbirds approaching.” That was Sulu.  
   
“Keep her steady.” Jim leaned forward. “Where are they?”  
   
“They’re at 278.5 degrees. To our port side, Captain.” It was his science officer this time. Jim glanced up. His _Vulcan_ science officer added, “They will be within firing range in fifteen seconds.”  
   
“Thank you, Mr—” Jim froze. Something seemed odd. The scene of the bridge in front of him stilled and went static like an old tube television.  
   
The ship rocked, knocking Jim back into focus.  
   
“Thank you, Mr. Spock,” Jim finished.  
   
“The Klingons have begun firing,” said Spock, perhaps a tad unnecessarily.  
   
“Shields!” snapped Jim.  
   
“Holding at seventy-nine percent.”  
   
Another crash. “Damn it,” Jim swore.  
   
“Seventy percent.” Spock glanced up from his viewer. “At the rate we are receiving fire, Captain, they will break through our shields within the next three and a half minutes.”  
   
“We should fire back at them.” Gary again. Jim shook his head.  
   
“Lieutenant Uhura, open a channel,” he ordered. “I want to see what dumb son of a bitch decided to break the rules of engagement. Mr. Spock—”  
   
“Captain, they have not yet fired on the _Florence_.” Spock looked up at him. “She has received no fire,” he repeated.  
   
“Huh.” Jim sat back down in his chair. “The Klingons are skirting a delicate line here,” he said quietly. A thoughtful hand traced his chin. “What’s their aim?”  
   
“Captain, I’m hailing the ships but they have so far refused to answer.”  
   
“Understood. Try—”  
   
Jim stopped. This was wrong, he thought. The Klingons had answered. They’d answered the first hail, they’d taunted him, and then they’d fired on the _Florence_ …  
   
“Lieutenant Uhura?” he said quietly.  
   
She turned around in her seat. “Yes, Captain?” she said, and smiled at him.  
   
Her eyes were gold, her pupils fire.  
   
Jim sucked in a breath. _This_ , whatever this facsimile was—  
   
“You’re not lieutenant Uhura,” he said hoarsely.  
   
The entire scene on the bridge froze. Jim glanced around. There was Sulu, knuckles white on the controls, there was Gary, about to open his mouth to argue no doubt, there was his science officer, Mr. Spock—  
   
Wait, no.  
   
He didn’t have a science officer named Spock, Jim remembered suddenly. His science officer was a human, named Larson, certainly no Vulcan—  
   
“Astute, Captain,” Not-Uhura said. It crossed one leg over the other, leaning back comfortably against the chair. “I’ve never encountered a human mind before,” it said casually, like they were just having this conversation over lunch and not languishing in the frozen-over prologue to the Enterprise’s final battle. “Your protector has kept you from me.”  
   
“My…”  
   
“I don’t mind admitting that his mind is stronger than most.” It smirked at him. Jim shuddered. “He has been a worthy adversary, but now his mind has grown weak after all this time and, well.” Not-Uhura stood fluidly. It didn’t even move like Uhura, Jim thought, and was amazed he hadn’t been able to tell the difference instantly. “Here you are,” it said.  
   
Jim found his voice. “What are you?”  
   
It fixed fire on him and Jim felt like his skin was burning. “Who am I, little human captain?” it asked, incredulously, and then it threw back Uhura’s head and began to laugh. It was an awful sound, echoing through the still-frozen bridge. It made Jim want to cower and shiver and shake apart. But he couldn’t. He held his ground.  
   
“You heard me,” he insisted, and if his legs wobbled a little, at least his voice was firm. “Who are you? What are you?”  
   
It kept laughing. And as it laughed, it reached Uhura’s hand out to him—it didn’t even look like Uhura’s hand anymore, Jim realized with a dawning sense of horror. The fingers were long, skeletal, too pale. He tried to scramble backward, and instead dropped to the ground as his injured knee suddenly screamed in pain. He tried to crawl, undignified and uncaring, desperate to avoid this thing’s touch—  
   
A reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. A deep voice behind him said into ear, “Look away, Jim.”  
   
He didn’t know if he recognized the voice, but it was strong and held no malice. Jim obeyed.  
   
As he turned to duck away, he heard a low and steady murmur in Vulcan, but couldn’t pick out any individual words. And then, even behind the safety of his closed eyelids, face tucked into the crook of his own arm, a blinding white light.  
   
Cautiously, Jim cracked his eyes open.  
   
They were nowhere. They were less and more than in nowhere. Jim’s eyes perceived a white field and a white sky and endless white, but behind it, crystals, and behind that, fractals, and behind that—  
   
His head ached fiercely as his brain tried to make sense of seeing what no human had ever been meant to see. It offered up interpretation after interpretation, all of them wrong, all of them bizarre.  
   
Spock was here with him, in the nothing. He was just a few meters away and in front (behind) of Jim. His back was to Jim, but as Jim watched he swayed and slowly rotated to face him. He lifted tired, tired eyes to meet Jim’s. Jim was very relieved to see that they were his standard brown. As Jim tried to figure out if he could walk or run or how to move in this very strange space, Spock lifted a trembling hand and offered the ta’al.  
   
“Well met, Mr. Kirk,” he said gravely. “I am gratified that you are undamaged by the encounter.”  
   
Jim gaped at him. “Undamaged,” he began, but it was stricken from his throat when Spock crumpled to the ground. “Spock!” he shouted, and he was running towards him, falling to his knees beside him, shaking his shoulders (Vulcans didn’t like to be touched, sorry, Spock, sorry). And his hand found Spock’s hand because for all that they were strangers, this strange man had probably saved his life—  
   
Jim blinked and they were somewhere else.  
   
“What?” he said stupidly.  
   
The computer said, “ _What is the natural logarithm of fifteen?_ ”  
   
“Uh…”  
   
“Two point seven zero eight,” said a high and clear voice behind him.  
   
_“Correct.”_  
   
Jim turned.  
   
_“What is the equation governing flow of water in a macro-scale, saturated porous medium, assuming the constant gravity of a planet?”_  
   
“Flux is equal to the hydraulic constant multiplied by the change in hydraulic head divided by the change in distance,” said Spock.  
   
_“Correct.”_  
   
At least, Jim thought it was Spock. The kid was young, but the hair was the same; Jim would’ve guessed eight, maybe nine years old at most, if he were human. He thought Vulcans mostly aged comparably, but he couldn’t be too sure. The kid was wearing a kind of brown smock, like a school uniform. His stood in front of the computer screen and Jim, his back straight, hands clasped behind him.  
   
_“What is the first key to the mental disciplines?”_  
   
“Logic.”  
   
_“Correct.”_  
   
Jim rubbed a finger over the smooth, curved walls of the—he glanced up—oddly bowl-like hole they were standing in.  
   
“Huh,” he said out loud. He tried waving his hand in front of Spock’s face, but the kid didn’t even blink. “Well, that can’t be good,” he muttered to himself.  
   
_“What is the second key to the mental disciplines?”_  
   
“Meditation.”  
   
_“Correct.”_  
   
“Spock,” Jim said. Not a flinch. “Spock!” he repeated, this time louder. “Hey!”  
   
“ _Who brought peace to Vulcan?”_  
   
“Surak,” said Spock. Jim frowned. A little basic for a kid Spock’s age. He was reliably informed that Vulcan children learned about Surak from the cradle.  
   
_“Correct. And before Surak?”_  
   
This time, Spock hesitated. Jim stopped prodding useless hands at the machinery in the pod in order to watch more closely.  
   
“There was no peace before Surak,” Spock said finally, but the firm press of his lips and the uneasiness in his eyes betrayed him. Nonetheless, the computer said,  
   
_“Correct.”_  
   
Spock exhaled, his shoulders slumping with it. When the computer spoke again however, he was clearly once more brought up short.  
   
_“Name the warlords.”_  
   
“I…” Spock’s throat moved. Jim leaned forward. “Please clarify.”  
   
_“List the warlords who parlayed with Surak.”_  
   
Spock’s brow wrinkled. Nevertheless, after another heartbeat, he opened his mouth and began to list out names. And it was a lot of names. By the time Spock had gotten to the eleventh warlord, Jim had already zoned out. He was jolted back to attention when the computer spoke again.  
   
_“Who was Yai-Enek?”_  
   
There hadn’t been a ‘correct’ this time, Jim noticed. Spock had clearly noticed too, judging by the clench of his fists at his sides. Still, he said, “Clarify.”  
   
_“Where did Yai-Enek hold his dominion?”_  
   
Spock bit down on his lower lip. “Yai-Enek held dominion near what is now _Raal_ , at the edge of the _Voroth_ Sea.”  
   
_“Correct.”_  
   
Spock breathed out a relieved sigh.  
   
_“What did Yai-Enek do?”_  
   
Silence. Spock stared at the computer uneasily. “Specify.”  
   
_“What did Yai-Enek do?”_  
   
“Yai-Enek was defeated at the hands of Sudoc.”  
   
_“What did Yai-Enek do?”_  
   
“I do not understand the question.” Now Spock sounded like he was balancing on the razor’s edge of annoyance.  
   
_“What did Yai-Enek do?”_  
   
“I do not understand—”  
   
The whole system shut down. Spock gazed at the now blank screen, eyes wide, clearly completely baffled. For his part, Jim mouthed to himself a silent, _what the fuck?_  
   
The lights shut off, encasing them in darkness. Jim felt a spool of nerves unfurl at his center. He could hear quick, panic-shortened breaths next to him. “Spock?” Jim said, and of course there was no answer. He didn’t know if reaching out at trying to grab at the panicking kid in the dark would make the situation worse or not, especially since there was no guarantee that that Jim could even touch anything.  
   
There was the sound of murmuring. “Darkness is merely the absence of light perceived by the eyes and the brain.” A breath of air as Spock inhaled. “There is no logical reason to be afraid of the dark. I am in my learning facility. There is no logical reason to be afraid—”  
   
The lights came back on.  
   
_“What is the Federation Standard translation of **e’shua**?” _ asked the computer, almost pleasantly.  
   
Spock didn’t answer. He looked trapped, frozen, unsure what was happening and even more what to do about it.  
   
_“What is the Federation Standard translation of **e’shua**?”_ the computer repeated, more insistent this time around.  
   
Wary, Jim watched as Spock tilted his head. “ _E’shua_?” he said, the lilt at the end marking it a question, like he couldn’t imagine any logical reason for the computer to ask such a thing. For what felt like the hundredth time that day, Jim wished he had found the wherewithal to pick up some basic Vulcan when he’d had the chance.  
   
_“What is the Federation Standard translation of **e’shua**?”_  
   
The lights flickered. Spock’s gaze darted away from the computer screen, over to where Jim stood, leaning against the wall of the pod, though his face gave no sign that he could even see Jim.  
   
_“What is the Federation Standard translation of **e’shua**?”_  
   
Jim could see the motion of Spock’s throat as he swallowed. “ _E’shua_ ,” he said, and closed his eyes. “Demon.”  
   
   
#  
   
   
The lights vanished again, encasing them in blackness. Jim forgot to breathe, like he’d swallowed the night and it was pressing down on his throat, on his ears, over his eyes and his mouth—  
   
“These are not from the Katric Ark,” Spock observed, and Jim looked up, gasping, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, his eyes scanning these new surroundings, trying to figure out where the hell he was now.  
   
From the looks of it, they were in some kind of meeting room. There was a long white table, with seven robed Vulcans seated around it. Outside the oval window, Jim could see what looked like high spires rising in the distance. He felt a jolt of recognition—even he’d be a bumpkin not to recognize the jutting shape of T’Klass’s Pillar. If there was a postcard of Surak’s Peak, dollars to donuts it was going to have a snapshot of Gol’s most picturesque monument on it. Which meant…  
   
“I also do not recognize these particular inscriptions,” Spock was saying. He was older than before, certainly an adult, and wearing similar brown and grey robes to the rest of those gathered around the table. He reached out cupped hands and deposited what looked like a small, clay vessel back onto the table. He was wearing gloves, Jim noticed, like whatever he had been touching needed to be handled with the utmost care. “They do not bear much resemblance to the arks recovered from P’Jem.” He glanced over at one of the women sitting across the table. “Where did you find these?”  
   
“We recovered them during our dig in _Raal_ ,” she said, and pushed a data PADD across the table towards him. “It is believed that the dig site is Warlord Yai-Enek’s tomb, though some of our data conflicts with other sources regarding his final resting place.”  
   
“Yai-Enek?” One of Spock’s eyebrows went up. The expression was so reminiscent of the ones he’d given to Jim earlier, that Jim almost felt heartened by the familiarity of it. “That would indeed be a find. The rumored psi talents of his family line alone would make the study of his katric ark very interesting.”  
   
The woman shook her head, though her crown of braids stayed loyally in place. “Although we believe we may have found Yai-Enek’s skeletal remains—”  
   
“How certain are you that what you have found are indeed his remains?” another Vulcan asked. This one had a long, slim beard, and inquisitive grey eyes beneath bushy eyebrows.  
   
She turned to him. “It is impossible to know for certain,” she said. “We have begun to implement DNA studies from volunteers in the surrounding community, although for obvious reasons, many are reluctant to disclose Yai-Enek as one of their ancestors.”  
   
“I see,” said the other Vulcan, and Jim thought he looked, very stoically, disappointed. He gestured towards the clay vessels. “You also believe you may have found his katra?”  
   
Her eyebrows drew together and she folded her hands on top of the table. “That was our original assumption, however…” she slid a second PADD towards him, and from his vantage point next to them, Jim could see that on the screen were a series of data charts. “However,” she said again, “radiogenic dating has indicated that these arks are significantly older than two-thousand years.”  
   
Spock leaned forward. “Did you test the bones?”  
   
“Of course.”  
   
The Vulcan man who had spoken before glanced over the PADD. “According to your data, the bones date to just before the Time of Awakening,” he said. “So, they may be Yai-Enek’s.”  
   
She nodded. “The bones, yes. The _katra_ …” Her gaze flitted over to the clay vessels, lingering particularly over the one that Spock had been examining previously. It was pitted and discoloured from millennia of desert burial, but the snarling head of a le-matya carved on top was still entirely distinguishable. “Almost certainly not.”  
   
“Fascinating,” Spock murmured. He picked up the clay vessel again, turning it over in his hands. His thumb rubbed the edge of the inscriptions carved along the sides. “If they are not Yai-Enek’s, nor any of his followers’, then to whom, are you suggesting, they belong?”  
   
“Jim.”  
   
Startled, Jim whirled around. His eyes widened as he caught sight of Spock—or at least, the Spock he’d known most recently. Instead of robes, he was wearing the green uniform jacket from before. “Spock?” he said cautiously. Behind him, the Vulcans continued to speak amongst themselves. “Is that you?”  
   
“As much as it is _you_ yourself who are also here,” Spock answered. He moved to stand alongside Jim. There was no body heat in their proximity, but Jim thought he felt a small crackle of electricity where their hands hung down side by side.  
   
“What is this? Did this—is this something that happened?”  
   
“Vulcan recollection is among some of the best in the Federation.” Spock nodded at the figures seated around the table. “It is very close.”  
   
Jim frowned. “I don’t think I understand what’s going on here.” A wisp of cloud passed over the glare of the Vulcan sun, and the room darkened infinitesimally, though enough for Jim to notice. He shivered and suddenly remembered. “Spock,” he said, feeling very urgent, “What does _e’shua_ mean?”  
   
Spock turned to him sharply. “Do not speak its name,” he said.  
   
“But—”  
   
“Jim.” Spock placed a hand on his shoulder. Jim blinked at it in surprise. “I will explain all to you,” Spock said. He glanced around the room. “But not here. This memory has few walls, no borders. Even you were able to access it, when my strength failed. It’s not—” he broke off, but his expression remained beseeching.  
   
“Not here,” Jim echoed, and then knew. “It’s not safe.”  
   
Spock inclined his head. When he looked back up again, their eyes met, and a frisson of understanding passed between them. He let go of Jim’s shoulder and reached his hand out towards Jim’s face.  
   
“Do it,” said Jim.  
   
“My mind to your mind,” said Spock. “My thoughts, to your thoughts.”  
   
In a dissolution of color, much more gradual than his previous strange movements through this unknowable mindscape, the conference room vanished, taking with it the robed Vulcans, the memory-Spock, and the far-away view of the Spire.  
   
Jim supposed he shouldn’t have really been surprised when the world reformed and they were back in the cave from before. Spock let go of him with a grunt, and actually stumbled back a few steps. Jim reached out to grab his arm before he could fall, steading him. He felt more solid now, but he didn’t know if that was because of his own projection or Spock’s abilities.  
   
“My thanks,” croaked Spock. He didn’t look good, Jim noticed. He looked clammy, tired, dark rings beneath his eyes.  
   
“Are you okay?”  
   
“That particular Earth colloquialism holds remarkably little meaning for me.” Spock settled himself with a graceless thump on the ground, a far cry from his previous movements. He rubbed his temples, like he was fending off a migraine.  
   
“Uh huh,” Jim said skeptically. “You look like shit.” He figured a day trip through someone else’s memories gave him license to drop any pretense at formality.  
   
Spock glared at him.  
   
“Just an observation,” said Jim.  
   
“Truly,” Spock returned dryly. He sighed. Jim crouched down next to him.  
   
“Spock,” he said softly.  
   
“Hmm?”  
   
“Tell me what happened?”  
   
His companion shifted to lean more comfortably against the stone walls of the cave. “I apologize,” he said wearily.  
   
“For what?”  
   
He swung to look at Jim, dark eyes sorrowful. “I believed I could keep you safe.”  
   
Jim huffed out a breath, smiling wryly. “I appreciate the sentiment,” he said honestly, “but Spock.” He gestured towards the walls, the ceiling of the cave above them. “Whatever this—whatever this _is_ , that you’re fighting? I’ve seen it now.” He shuddered, inadvertently. “I’ve seen its face.”  
   
“I know.”  
   
Jim dared to touch Spock’s hand. “The fact that you’ve been fighting this, this _thing_ all this time? And you’re still…” he shook his head. “That’s amazing, Spock. Truly. God knows I can’t possibly understand what you’ve gone through here.”  
   
Spock looked at him. “I would not wish for another to reach the same, unfortunate point of understanding that I have.”  
   
The corner of Jim’s lips twitched. “You’re quite noble, aren’t you,” he said. Spock didn’t answer, but neither had he removed his hand from beneath Jim’s. Jim squeezed it. Spock let out a sigh. “Let me help,” said Jim. He leaned in closer, gaze intent. “I’m not as skilled, or practiced as you are, but I’m new. I’m rested. I have that strength, Spock. And hell, ask any one of my former instructors at the academy: I’m stubborn as an ass.”  
   
“I _have_ been inside your mind.”  
   
“Well then,” said Jim, smiling. He sat down on the ground the rest of the way next to Spock, Spock’s hand still warm beneath his. The Vulcan’s head lolled back to rest against the hard rock behind them, but Jim, no stranger to wartime brotherhood, rolled his eyes and reached out to guide Spock’s head to rest on his own shoulder instead.  
   
They sat there in silence for a while, Spock slumped against him, Jim aware that while Spock might appear to be at rest, his mind was ever-active, protecting them both from whatever malevolent force waited outside the safety of Spock’s mental hideaway. Finally, Jim broke the silence.  
   
“Tell me what happened,” he said again. “Let me help.”  
   
Spock released a long breath of air, but did not otherwise move from his position. Jim could admit he didn’t know all there was to know about Vulcans, but he thought that anyone who’d spent the last three years as a prisoner inside their own mind, had to be hurting for some comfort, Vulcan or not. He couldn’t begrudge it to Spock, who’d gone to the trouble of pulling Jim’s ass out of the fire at least twice already. He let go of Spock’s hand, and wrapped his freed arm around his shoulders. Spock didn’t pull away, so Jim settled in.  
   
“Spock?” he said softly.  
   
“Yai-Enek was an ambitious man,” Spock said. “A warrior, a conqueror before the Age of Awakening.”  
   
“That’s when Surak…?”  
   
“Yes.” This close, Spock’s voice was a deep rumble, Jim feeling the vibration of it through to his own chest. “Surak led my planet out of the darkness, but before Surak, there was only war.” He sighed. “Chaos. Conflict over resources, over mates, over honor.” He shifted his body a little, and Jim deliberately relaxed his arm, in case Spock wanted the space now, but he didn’t draw away. “Yai-Enek was a conqueror,” Spock repeated, “but, compared to the rest of his ilk, history does not label him a particularly successful one.”  
   
“Huh,” said Jim, eyebrows rising with interest. “So, bad at conquering, still ambitious.” He snorted. “Sounds like a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one.”  
   
“It is a logical conclusion,” Spock agreed. He paused to take a breath, as if stealing a moment to best determine how to explain the rest. “His official list of exploits is rather short,” he said. “From what we know of his rule, Yai-Enek spent a great deal of his time fending off Sudoc’s armies.” At Jim’s blank look, Spock explained, “Sudoc was one of the most feared tyrants. Many recall him best as Surak’s rival.”  
   
“Huh,” said Jim. “Okay.”  
   
“In short order, Sudoc did, in fact, manage to subdue Yai-Enek’s forces, and absorbed Yai-Enek’s holdings into his own. Yai-Enek was killed by Sudoc’s own hand, of course.”  
   
“Naturally.” Jim still had trouble imagining Vulcans as any kind of bloodthirsty tyrant, especially the variety that murdered their rivals in battle, but hey. It wasn’t like Earth’s history was any more civilized. “And that was the end of Yai-Enek?”  
   
Spock hesitated. “There is a legend,” he said. “Before my—before my work, here. I dismissed it as nothing but that. There was no evidence, no reliable sources, nothing to support the claims made—”  
   
“Spock,” Jim interrupted. “What legend?”  
   
Clearly reluctant, Spock said, “The _story_ goes that, although defeat by Sudoc’s armies was certainly inevitable, Yai-Enek refused to accept it. He knew that the cornerstone of Sudoc’s strength in battle was his prowess in the psi arts, and so he determined that if he could create a weapon capable of disorienting the psychic ability of his armies, his own might stand a chance.”  
   
“So, he created a weapon?” Jim guessed.  
   
“No,” said Spock. “But according to the legend, he did find one.” Now, he did move away from Jim, but only enough so that they could face each other. Gaze intent, Spock said, “Do you know what a _katra_ is?”  
   
Jim shook his head.  
   
“The closest Standard translation would be ‘soul,’ but a katra is more than that. It is the very essence of a being, their mind, their spirit. All of their energy.” He laced his fingers together. “Until Surak’s katra was re-discovered, along with the _Kir-shara_ , even Vulcans believed the idea to be somewhat…” he trailed off, lips pursed wryly, “…fanciful.” He shook his head. “But it is very real. A katra may be stored in the mind of a willing host or,” and here his voice became pointed, “in a vessel. A katric ark, we call it.”  
   
At this, Jim’s eyes widened in understanding. He’d seen them in Spock’s memories, and on the ship. “The clay jars.”  
   
“ _Jars_ are not exactly—”  
   
“Whatever.” Jim waved him off. “You’re saying those were _katra_ , um, arks?”  
   
“I am.”  
   
“Huh.” Jim sat back a moment to digest this. “But in the memory,” he said slowly, “the lady said they weren’t Yai-Enek’s.”  
   
Spock’s gaze slid away. “They were not.”  
   
This, Jim sensed, was the pivotal question. “So, whose were they?”  
   
Spock’s mouth formed into a grimace. “You Terrans have a legend as well: the djinn. Are you familiar with it?”  
   
“One thousand and one nights,” said Jim, who knew for a fact that he owned an annotated, illustrated copy of it somewhere in storage. He chanced a quick grin. “Magic lamp, three wishes…”  
   
“Yes,” said Spock. His forehead wrinkled. “The Vulcan version does not involve wishes, however.”  
   
“Eh,” said Jim. “The wishes tend to go sour, anyway.” His brow creased. “The djinn aren’t evil, though,” he said cautiously. “Some are good, some are bad. Same as people.” He lifted one shoulder dismissively. “At least, that’s the story.”  
   
“Yes,” said Spock. “That is the story.” He rested his elbows on his knees, something conflicted in the jut of his chin, the wariness in his eyes. “The Vulcan story,” he said, “circles around katra. Some of these katra, or so go our legends, are very old. So old that they might not even have been truly—” he stopped. Jim waited. “Vulcan,” Spock said abruptly, and then looked quickly away, as if shamed by the very idea of such superstition.  
   
Jim’s mind was racing. He had a very bad feeling about where this was headed. “Huh,” he said. “Not Vulcan?”  
   
“Like your djinn.” Spock looked a bit pained at the admission. “Something like—demigods. Spirits.”  
   
“Uh…”  
   
“Such a thing is preposterous of course,” said Spock, with what Jim thought privately was a lot of conviction from someone who had a doctorate in psychic phenomena. “What is far more likely is that the katra are simply—very old souls.” His expression turned pensive. “Like all souls, some good and some…not. Some that faded away in their storage and some that, for lack of a better word, grew stronger.”  
   
Jim’s lip curled. He’d heard enough legends and cautionary tales to have a very good idea about where this one was headed. “Let me guess,” he said sardonically, “Yai-Enek found a bad egg.”  
   
Spock blinked at him. “No,” he said slowly, “he found a katric ark.”  
   
Jim rolled his eyes. “That’s what I—you know what, never mind.” He gestured for Spock to continue. “Go on. Tell the story.”  
   
“No matter its origin,” Spock said. “A very old katric ark may hold a very bad soul. A being filled with hatred, with malice, with a lust for power. Yai-Enek’s ambition led him to find such a creature, in the hopes that it might hold the key to defeating Sudoc’s forces.” His nostrils flared. “His hubris led him to attempt to barter with it.”  
   
“A deal with a demon.”  
   
“The colloquialism is apt,” Spock agreed. “Naturally, the creature overpowered him, enslaving his mind, controlling his body, possessing him in all senses of the word. A total violation.” Spock shivered, a movement so slight that Jim would probably have missed it if their knees had not been pressed right up against one another. “It took the combined mental prowess of Sudoc and his greatest warriors to restrain the creature, and confine it again to the katric ark.” He sighed heavily, but then added, “As the legend tells, it was actually this encounter that was instrumental in convincing Sudoc to eventually pursue terms with Surak. Sudoc was said to fear nothing, but I suspect that meeting an ancient, terrible being face to face, and being forced to reckon with what may happen should it again be released during a time of war…Well. It may have changed his perspective.”  
   
“You know,” said Jim. “I really couldn’t blame him.” He exhaled. Spock was looking at him expectantly, like a teacher waiting for questions now that the lesson had been explained. To be honest, Jim wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask. He did anyway. “So,” he said. “Let me make sure I got this straight: Yai-Enek released what, maybe, a superstitious individual might call a literal demon,” (he watched as Spock winced at the term _demon_ , but didn’t correct it), “which proceeded to literally possess him like a 20th century horror holo—”  
   
“I’m not sure if that particular reference—”  
   
“—which a slightly less evil and literal tyrant had to put back in the box,” Jim finished. He grimaced. “And which, and I’m going to go out on a limb here, you guys let back out again.”  
   
Spock froze. “I never said that.”  
   
“You didn’t have to!” snapped Jim, and immediately felt bad about it when Spock’s face flooded with shame. “Sorry,” said Jim, more quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout.” He puffed out his cheeks, then released the air slowly. “It’s just, it’s a lot to take in, you know. I thought I was signing up for a scrap mission, not demon possession.”  
   
Spock said, voice so low that Jim had to strain to hear it, “You are not incorrect in your assumption.”  
   
“Yeah, but still.”  
   
“We released it. I—” Spock huffed out a short, angry breath. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “It was the war,” he said. “The Klingons…” He pressed his fingers to his temples, speaking to his lap. “We needed a weapon,” he said. “We needed a weapon that could match the fury of the Klingons, that would stop at nothing to defend what it regarded as its right.”  
   
“Vulcan,” said Jim, and Spock nodded.  
   
“We believed we took every precaution,” he said. “The project was put together with the utmost secrecy. The evacuation orders were paramount in case something went awry. I was one of a handful of experts brought on board. The first several katric arks recovered from Yai-Enek’s tomb were unresponsive, and I believe we grew lax, that the legend was simply that: a legend. A story. And when we found the ark that held the creature, and when we released it…” he swallowed. “It tore through my colleagues’ minds like they were nothing more than sand. Those that resisted, it toyed with. Turned them on each other. Drove them mad. Made them—” his voice broke. With a jolt of horror, Jim remembered the scene in the lab eleven, and in the sickbay. The destruction. The blood.  
   
“I’m sorry,” Jim whispered. The words felt like nothing, less than nothing. Useless sentiments at best.  
   
“When it came for me,” said Spock, “I was the last with any experience in the mental disciplines. I needed,” his voice firmed, “I had to stop it.”  
   
“You held it back,” Jim realized. “You held it back so that the rest of your crew could escape.”  
   
Spock dipped his head. “Not only for the crew,” he said. “It was well-capable of reasoning. It could have ridden any one of us out of the ship, into a shuttle.” His mouth firmed. “To release such a creature into the galaxy—it could not be permitted.”  
   
“So you froze yourself. So that no matter what happened…” Jim’s internal horror grew. It was one thing to die. It was another to submit yourself to potential, unending torment, with no bodily escape or sweet release of death. Spock had had no guarantee that the creature would go into stasis, that his own mind would go into stasis. “You condemned yourself,” he said, still unable to process the enormity of it, of what that meant for Spock’s mind, for his sanity.  
   
“The needs of the many,” said Spock, “outweighed the needs of the few.” His expression looked lined, tired, but his eyes still held the kindle of their original flame. “Or the one.”  
   
Jim passed a hand over his eyes. “Jesus,” he muttered. He took his hand away. “That’s why, when Bones woke you up you were, you know.” He pantomimed the meld.  
   
“I’m sorry,” said Spock. “I would have placed myself back into stasis if possible, but you,” he hesitated, “when you touched me it, it enabled the creature to gain a foothold on your mind.”  
   
“So, you did the thing.” Jim pointed at his forehead. Spock nodded. “And then what?”  
   
“And then I went looking for you.”  
   
He frowned. “You didn’t even know me.”  
   
Spock lifted his chin. “This creature feeds on fear,” he said. “On pain. On suffering. It brings nightmares wherever it goes.” Remembering the scene in the farmhouse kitchen, Jim could only nod. “I could not permit it to torment an innocent.”  
   
“Maybe not so innocent,” Jim reminded him.  
   
Spock gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Jim.”  
   
Jim nudged him. Spock tolerated it with a huff. “Thanks,” said Jim. Spock looked at him in sharp surprise. “What?” Jim shrugged. “You didn’t have any responsibility to me. You could’ve just—let it have me, you know? Kept safe in your own mind cocoon, until Bones called in the Vulcan cavalry.”  
   
“The Vulcan cavalry?” Spock said dubiously.  
   
“Sure.” Jim gestured expansively. “A whole army of telepaths if Bones gets his way.” He dropped his arms. “Between the two of us, Bones isn’t exactly a people person, but I think it’s cause he’s so abrasive that things generally get done his way anyway.”  
   
“Bones is your Dr. McCoy,” Spock clarified.  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“You believe that he will have made contact with my people, that they will send aid.”  
   
Jim rubbed at his chin. “Well, yes,” he said. He let out an uncomfortable chuckle. “You say that like you don’t.”  
   
Spock just looked at him. Jim scoffed.  
   
“Come on,” he said. “Even if they didn’t want to, I don’t know, release the creature into the galaxy like you said, it seems like it’s a far bigger risk to just leave you floating around in space.” He pointed to himself. “I mean, look what happened!”  
   
“Perhaps something befell the crew before they could get word to the high council,” Spock said. “However,” he looked down at his hands. “It gives me little pleasure to inform you that I am regarded as somewhat of an aberration on my planet.”  
   
“Why, because of the telepathy thing?”  
   
“In part.”  
   
Jim squinted at him. “You can’t just leave it there, you know,” he informed him. Spock shrugged.  
   
“In truth, I—” he cleared his throat. “It is possible they may have already decided that it is more logical to leave me—as is, so to speak.”  
   
“What?” Jim could barely get himself to form the words around his indignation. “Are you serious? That’s bullshit. They probably just hadn’t found you yet.”  
   
“It has been three years,” Spock reminded him. He swallowed. “It is the logical conclusion, given the relevant data.”  
   
“Bullshit,” Jim grunted again. He exhaled, brushing his hand through his hair. “Okay,” he said. “If—and that’s a big _if_ —we can’t rely on your guys to get us out of this,” he gnawed on his bottom lip, “how do we get out?”  
   
“Get out?”  
   
“You know.” Jim waggled his fingers. “Get out of Oz. Wake up. Put the evil spirit back in the evil spirit box. Whatever.”  
   
“I,” said Spock. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s possible. The katric arks on my ship were destroyed.”  
   
Jim snorted. He got to his feet, leaning ever-so-slightly over Spock’s form, and rested a hand on Spock’s shoulder. He formed his other hand into a fist and rapped his knuckles against the wall of the cave. “Yeah,” he drawled, “that’s definitely not going to work for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously none of this mythology is canon. 
> 
> Vulcan Translation:
> 
> E'shua - Demon  
> Katra - Soul  
> Kir-shara - the complete original text of Surak's teachings


	6. Chapter 6

It was known that James Tiberius Kirk had become a starship captain partially because he had a talent for getting things done. Jim would have said that it was because he didn’t like to fuck around. McCoy would have said, in that exaggerated drawl he used especially when he wanted to make his point extra clear, that Jim _fucked around_ plenty—it was just that somehow, all of his fuckery ended up working out in the end, because the universe was a little bitch.

Spock, however, hadn’t seemed to have gotten the memo yet.

“I do not think that is a good idea,” he said, when Jim proposed his initial plan. “Do you not recall what transpired the last time we—I—relaxed my guard?”

“That’s not the same, Spock,” Jim said, exasperated. “Look, you’ve been in the fight for years, and now I’m adding an extra layer of effort to it for you, aren’t I?” Spock didn’t answer that one, but he didn’t really need to. “You’re the expert, but you can’t be if all your mind wants to do is sleep.”

“One cannot _sleep_ in a mind meld,” Spock informed him testily. “For all intents and purposes, we are both already asleep. The analogy is not accurate.”

“Then rest, then.” Jim knew he sounded desperate. He didn’t really care. Spock’s mouth remained a stubborn line. Jim heaved a sigh. “Listen,” he said, and stopped pacing so that he could draw in closer to Spock. “It makes sense. You’re exhausted. I need the practice.”

“I am perfectly capable.”

Jim rolled his eyes so hard there was a momentary concern that they were going to roll right out of his skull. “Spock, we need to fight this thing with all we’ve got. Teach me how to shield, and I’ll keep the walls up while you, you know,” he made a vague gesture, “gather up your strength again.”

“Shielding is not so simple,” Spock said stiffly. “Even Vulcans may take time to master the procedure.”

“Spock, we are literally in a mindmeld right now. I’m sure there is something you can do that could speed up the process.”

Silence. Spock looked away.

Sensing an opening, Jim said, “What?”

“There may be one possibility,” Spock finally said, clearly reluctant.

“Oh?”

He heaved a sigh. “It is not orthodox.” Jim gave him a look. Spock relented. “If we deepen the link, I may be able to stimulate the psychic receptors in your brain, giving them some of my own shielding experience, so to speak.”

“Great,” said Jim easily. “We’ll do that then.” He rolled up his sleeves, though felt silly as soon as he had. It wasn’t like he really had sleeves to roll up, anyway. Then he saw the expression on Spock’s face. “What?”

“If I were to do this, there exists the possibility of some, ah, some side effects.”

“Side effects?” Jim said warily. “Such as?”

Spock relaxed from his previous, meditative position, and rose fluidly to his feet. “Human psychic receptors are generally undeveloped,” he said. “To stimulate them may inadvertently affect other aspects of the brain. There could be damage.”

“Damage?”

“Brain damage.”

“Uh…”

“There also lies the possibility,” Spock said hesitantly, “that your synapses may become attuned to, well. My own.”

“And that’s bad,” Jim guessed.

Spock looked pained. “It does imply a certain social contract to which neither of us have, well.” He linked his hands behind his back, and stared somewhere over Jim’s left shoulder. “Agreed.”

It took Jim a moment or two to get it, but when he did, he let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “Listen, Spock,” he said. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants and leaned against the side of the cave. “If accidentally getting married to you is the price we have to pay for getting out of here, I will go and put on that white dress right now.”

Spock’s nostrils flared. “This is amusing for you.”

“Spock.” Jim pulled his hands out of his pockets and stepped forward. Before he spoke, he took a moment to catalogue the stone of Spock’s face, the tightness of his lips. _Aberration_ , he remembered. Jim gentled his tone. “I’ve known you for barely a day, but your character speaks for itself.” When Spock swung his head away, Jim reached out to clasp Spock’s upper arm. “You sacrificed yourself,” he said. “You saved my life. You’re honest, you’re intelligent.” He winked. “You’re not bad looking—don’t give me that, I saw the crew manifesto, you’re one of the best of the bunch.”

“You are being facetious,” Spock said, but there was a twinge of green in his cheeks. At least he was looking at Jim again.

“Maybe,” said Jim. “Or maybe, if we weren’t in this, you know, particularly weird, life or death situation, you might be the kind of individual I’d like to take to dinner.”

Spock crossed his arms, and gave him a very unimpressed look. Jim sighed.

“It’s intimate,” he said. “I understand.” He stepped in closer. “If my mind is uncomfortable for you, then I get it. I don’t want you to do it. But I’m telling you now: I trust you.” He let go of Spock’s bicep, but didn’t move away. Instead, he rested his palm briefly over Spock’s side, where he knew the Vulcan heart to be. “I trust you,” he said again. “I trust you’re not going to hurt me. I trust that you’re going to do your best to make sure we both get through this. And Spock,” this close, Jim had to tilt his head up to look Spock directly in the eye, “we are _both_ getting out of this.”

Spock stared at him for a long moment, and then he let out a slow, whistling sigh. He reached down to briefly cover Jim’s hand, still resting over his heart, with his own. “Your mind is not a discomfort to me,” he said. He withdrew his hand. “If you are certain.”

“Do it,” said Jim. He let his own hand fall away, and tilted up his chin so that Spock could access his face. “I can do this,” he said. “I just need you to show me how.”

When Spock touched his face, Jim had the sense of the cave falling away beneath their feet. Or rather, he was now seeing the cave for what it really was: not literal rock, hiding them deep underground, but mental layers of deception, of misdirection, of forced plainness. It was architecture of the mind rather than the earth, an intricate weave of thought and memory. Jim tried not to gape.

 _“It is not so spectacular,”_ Spock told him, though he wasn’t really speaking. _“Others of my ilk could do a far superior job, I’m sure.”_

 _“Cut it with the false modesty,”_ Jim sent back to him. _“This is amazing. It’s—it’s beautiful.”_ What he didn’t say, and he didn’t know if Spock could sense, was the question of how exactly in the hell he, Jim Kirk, was going to keep this thing together.

 _“You experienced this previously,”_ and Spock gave him the disorienting memory of white and fractals. It caused an instant headache to rip through him. _“You do not recognize it?”_

_“Wait, that’s the same thing? This whole time?”_

_“I have been allowing your brain to process through my own psychic centers.”_ Spock emanated a faint wave of reassurance. Jim accepted it gratefully. _“Yours are undeveloped, and so your mind cannot perceive these constructions on its own. In order for you to assist in the maintenance of the shield however, you must be able to perceive these without my assistance. I am going to let go, now.”_

 _“No, wait—”_ And then the cave was gone, the construction of Spock’s mental shield was gone, and that familiar disorienting state of having an incredibly bad trip, was back at full force.

_“What you are experiencing is your brain attempting to make sense of what it cannot perceive. It is not unlike your mind filling in the blind spot at the very front of your vision.”_

_“I think my mind is going to explode,”_ Jim informed him, and meant that very literally.

_“With your permission, I will begin now.”_

_“Yeah, go ahead,”_ sad Jim, who was pretty sure that if this continued for much longer, he was going to actually vomit. God only knew if one _could_ vomit in middle of a psychic projection, but he didn’t particularly want to find out.

Spock touched him, but it was more than a touch. Jim felt him there, in his mind, a presence he could have found his way to in the dark, prodding at something sensitive, at something he hadn’t even known was there.

Jim yelped. Spock immediately withdrew.

_“Are you well?”_

Jim inhaled. _“Yeah,”_ he said. _“Sorry.”_ He mentally squared his shoulders. _“It just—it tickles.”_ He was prepared for the wave of exasperation even before it hit him. The relief beneath it was a little unexpected though. Jim smiled. _“Keep going,”_ he said. _“I trust you.”_

Spock touched him again. That time, Jim concentrated on the feeling. It was odd, like simultaneously having the back of his neck stroked, while his visual center sharpened. It was an embrace and a delicate, delicate knife. Jim tensed, Spock withdrew a little. He relaxed, and Spock went back to work. If he concentrated, Jim could feel him. Not just his presence, that was clear as a bell, though how that worked without vision Jim couldn’t have explained if his actual life depended on it. But he could feel the colors beneath the shape of Spock’s visage now. A warm burnt umber, like an inviting hearth inside on a cold night.

 _“That is a fanciful image_.” But Jim could feel the bemusement beneath the words.

 _“You’re a fanciful image,”_ Jim sent back, lazy with the heat of it. He was being cradled by the rays of a distant sun, and like hell was he letting go of this.

 _“Jim,”_ Spock said warningly.

Oh. Right. _“My bad.”_ He tried to retain focus on what Spock was doing, and less on how it was making him feel. Something flickered at the corner of his eye. _“You have a nice brain_ ,” he said.

 _“Jim_ ,” Spock’s voice was a low cajole. _“Focus on me._ ”

 _“Right.”_ Jim tried, mentally squinting, like Spock was fitting him for a pair of telepathic glasses.

 _“Relax,”_ Spock commanded, and then he sparked something, something in the back of Jim’s mind, some final, crucial twist, and—

_“Oh.”_

_“Jim?”_

_“I can see you, Spock.”_ The words felt insufficient. Yes, he could see Spock now, but he didn’t just _see_ him. He felt him. He felt the veins running beneath his skin, the rapid tattoo of his heart, the firing of the synapses in his brain. And he felt the core of him, the flicker of fire that made up all that Spock was, his resolution, his scars and his courage, his deep, deep kindness.

 _“Oh_ ,” Jim said again. Around him, before his very eyes, the cave reformed. Jim could see beyond it now, if he focused just right, like the rock was just paper mâché over scaffolding. He touched his face. His fingers came away wet.

“Jim, are you well?” Spock’s voice was uncharacteristically anxious.

“Just,” said Jim, “just—just give me a minute.” He took several deep breaths, wiping away the dampness on his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. “Okay,” he said. He tried a wobbly smile. “Okay.”

“You’re sure?” There was deep furrow in Spock’s brow. He wasn’t touching Jim, not really, but they were close enough that their arms brushed.

“Yeah.” Jim swallowed. “Yeah, I’m good. It was just, it was a lot.” He took another settling breath. His heartbeat slowed back to something approaching normal.

“Occasionally,” Spock began awkwardly, “emotional transference may be a side effect of a deep meld.”

“Great, now he tells me,” Jim mumbled. He straightened his shoulders. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what I need to do to keep this place up and running.”

Spock explained the basics of it, the way he had to project outward, but not too outward. The way he had to envision the cave, believe it was the cave, make the mental framework around them believe that it was a cave, boring, nothing. Jim joined him, and Spock directed his mental energies at the joints in the framework, where there had been previous attempts at incursion, where the walls were weakest. What Spock neglected to explain was that as soon as he let go—and he did let go, though very reluctantly, was that as soon as the Spock was no longer keeping the mental walls up, it felt to Jim like a literal mountain had been dropped straight on his back.

He gasped, the wind knocked clean out of him. Spock, who had already closed his eyes and settled into a meditative position on the ground, reached for him immediately. Jim batted his hands away. “No,” he said firmly, gritting his teeth. “I’ve got this. Take your damn nap.”

“Jim.”

“No, I’ve got this,” Jim insisted. He managed a strained smile. “If I can’t hold it anymore, I’ll wake you, okay?”

“You swear?”

“I swear, Spock.” Their eyes locked. Jim winked at him. Spock just looked confused. He was kind of getting used to the projection now, Jim thought. The weight was there but it wasn’t impossible. “I promise,” he said. “Let me do this.”

Spock withdrew his hand. He relaxed back down and shut his eyes again. “Very well,” he said. “Thank you. I will rest.”

“Yeah, you’d better damn rest,” Jim grunted, though quietly, when it looked like Spock was actually going to put his money where his mouth was. He looked down at the still cap of black hair. “Idiot,” he said softly, fondly. He sat down as well and leaned against the wall of the cave. He could see beyond it now, see it for what it really was, but he liked the illusion of the solidity. Spock didn’t stir. Jim leaned into Spock so that their shoulders touched. “Rest,” he said again and, with a deep breath, set to applying himself as the guardian to their shared mental barrier.

It was hard work. Jim had known that in theory of course, but the reality of it was something else. If he hadn’t gone through the rigors of the Academy at the top of his class, Jim wasn’t sure if he would have been able to keep it up. It was like cramming for final exam after final exam, all the while running a marathon, all the while also trying to keep his mind—and by extension, _Spock’s_ mind—as blank and as unnoticeable as possible.

Time passed. Jim didn’t know how much. Spock’s attempted meditation had quickly proved a failure. He was slumped over onto Jim now, very still except for the short puffs of breath Jim could feel against his collarbone. Jim found he didn’t mind. Whatever else the rest was doing, it was enough to bring Spock some semblance of peace. Jim could sense it.

He could, he found, sense the creature faintly across the mindscape, like a spot of flooded oil that drew the reluctant eye. The stain of it slithered once over the scaffolding of their hideaway. Testing, trying to see if there was a way in, slither through the cracks grown wider with time and exhaustion, and now Jim’s inexperience. Jim remained utterly still, and tried to think of nothing. The thing moved on. Even so, though he was essentially unconscious, Jim found Spock’s closeness a comfort. If something went wrong, Jim could wake him, and Spock would be there.

In between moments of strengthening their mental barrier, Jim tried to think about what to do next. He suspected that McCoy had done something to keep them both under, but it couldn’t last forever. He sure as hell couldn’t last forever and, he thought, with another glance down at his companion, Spock probably couldn’t either. But what to do?

There was the worst option, Jim thought. But he didn’t know if the regular rules of death applied to their enemy. Who was to say that once they were gone, the thing couldn’t just reanimate their bodies like particularly gruesome puppets? From the way Spock had explained it, a katra was something like concentrated, sentient energy. A soul. You couldn’t destroy energy, and Jim didn’t want to risk contaminating something else, letting it loose into the galaxy no matter how diluted.

No, Jim realized. He didn’t know how, or if, it could be destroyed, but it could at least be contained. That was what Spock had been doing all this time, wasn’t it? Containing it in his own head? But Spock shouldn’t have to, Jim thought. There had to be a way to put the genie back in the bottle. There had to be a way to contain it.

Unbidden, his memory shifted to what they had found on Spock’s ship. Katric arks, he now knew. All smashed to pieces, shards lying on the floor. But what separated a katric ark from a regular clay jar? What gave them their shackles?

Lab eleven, Jim thought suddenly. There had been a containment field in there. Obviously, it hadn’t worked, or they wouldn’t have been in this predicament. But maybe…

“Spock,” he whispered. The Vulcan, now half in his lap, barely stirred. Jim poked him. “Spock,” he said again, more insistently. “Wake up.”

Spock jolted awake. “Jim?” The lines round his mouth were already tight with alarm. Jim clasped his shoulder before he could move any further.

“Sorry to startle you,” he said. “The shielding’s fine. Or at least,” he shrugged, “it’s as good as I can make it.” When he said this, the rigidity of Spock’s body diminished.

“I see.” Then he seemed to realize their positioning. He drew away from Jim, sitting fully upright. “My apologies,” he said stiffly. Jim rolled his eyes at him.

“Did you rest well? You did totally sleep, but the way.”

“I—” Spock hesitated. He dipped his head quickly and then back up again. “Yes, I…I believe that I did. Thank you.”

Jim patted his shoulder. “Good.”

“Did you need me for something?” Spock was looking with curiosity at the ceiling. When he turned back towards Jim, there was an expression of naked surprise on his face. “These walls are very solid,” he said. “It is well done.”

Jim beamed. “Thanks,” he said. He still felt like there was a mountain on top of him, but it was a manageable one. “That’s not why I woke you, though.”

“No?” Spock tilted his head.

“No.” Jim leaned in. “Tell me about the katric arks,” he said. “What makes them special? Why do they work?”

The lines in Spock’s forehead wrinkled. “The structures are infused with a certain mineralogy, rare outside of Vulcan. Rubidiatium.” He gestured with his hands, his fingers forming the general shape of a box. “A property of the crystalline structure is its energetic resonance. It permits the energy to bounce back and forth without losing momentum, which maintains the integrity of the katra.”

“And the containment field in lab eleven?” Jim asked quietly.

“The theory was not sound,” Spock said. He sounded disgruntled. “I did place my objections at the time.”

Jim nodded. Too bad. Still, he thought, might as well follow the trail the whole way down. “Would any crystal work?”

“No,” Spock said, almost instantly. “Katric arks require a particular energy resonance. Quartz, for example, would be insufficient to contain one.”

Hmm. And it wasn’t like Jim kept his prized rock collection in his captain’s quarters. Honestly, he didn’t think there was a single naked crystal on board his ship, unless Chapel had plans on recycling her crystal healing kit from last year’s April Fools. And sure, the engine room had metals, but it certainly didn’t—

Wait.

“What about dilithium? It has an energy resonance. Hell, it can hold enough to power a starship.”

“We did base the containment field off of warp core schematics,” Spock said slowly. “There is a structural and molecular similarity between dilithium and rubidiatium.”

“So then,” Jim said, trying not too sound too eager, “a dilithium crystal might be able to contain a katra? At least long enough until we can find a real katric ark?”

“It has never been attempted.”

“But it could?” Jim pressed.

Spock stared at him, and then he blinked and shook his head. “Jim, the theory has merit, but even if it could work, we’d need viable dilithium crystal within reach. Once awake, I would not be able to hold off the creature long enough to wait for one to be obtained. We would need to be touching it already, or have it incredibly close at hand.”

“Close at hand?” Jim echoed. He glanced down at his hands, curled over his knees. His heartbeat sped up even further. “That’s what we’d need?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “As I said: unlikely. Unless it is general practice on your ship to store dilithium crystals in your sickbay?”

“Well, no,” Jim acceded. He held up his right hand. In the faint light of the faux cave, the double-banded gold of his Starfleet Academy class ring, winked. “But what about this?”

“I do not understand.” Spock’s frown deepened when Jim wiggled his fingers. “The ring?”

“The ring.”

“The ring is gold.”

“The ring is gold,” Jim corrected, “inlaid with pieces of dilithium.”

Spock’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Cost me an extra two hundred credits, too,” Jim grumbled. He twisted it. “Stupid engineering traditions.”

“I believed you were on the command track.” Spock still hadn’t taken his eyes off the ring.

“I doubled.” Jim took the ring off his finger and held it out for inspection. “The thing made sure to destroy all the katric arks on your ship,” he said. “I saw the pieces. But this—do you think this could do the same trick?”

Spock placed a hand over the ring. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Jim watched him anxiously. “The crystals are small,” he said, opening his eyes. He met Jim’s gaze. “But they resonate with enough echo that I can sense them, even here. There is psychic potential there. The shape of the metal container may be to our advantage as well.” He returned the ring to Jim, who slipped it back onto his finger.

“I’m wearing this out there.” He gestured beyond the walls. “In the real world, it’s right on my finger.” He took a breath. “Can we fight this thing? Can we lock it in here?” He held up his hand again.

“It has never been done before.”

“But is it possible?” Jim persisted.

His forehead furrowing, Spock steepled his hands. “The theory,” he said, putting extra emphasis on the word, “is sound. However…” he hesitated. “It would be a risk.”

“Define _risk_.”

Spock just looked at him. Jim’s mouth twisted.

“Okay,” he said, “but if we don’t do anything, eventually we’re going to face the same risks, right? I don’t know about you but, even tag-teaming for breaks or whatever, we can’t stay like this forever.”

Spock shook his head slowly. “No,” he admitted.

“At least this way, we choose the time, we choose the place, we choose our strategy.” Jim spread his hands. “If we go down, we go down fighting.”

“You are suggesting what humans term a _last stand_ ,” Spock said, tilting his head, eyes narrowed.

“You’re familiar with it?”

“Humans are not the only species with such a concept.”

“Really?” Jim raised his eyebrows. He leaned towards Spock, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “And how do Vulcans feel about last stands?”

Jim wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t for Spock to lean in as well, their foreheads almost close enough to touch. “Given the circumstances,” he said, just as quiet, “I believe that a Vulcan might also be amenable.”

“Amenable?”

Spock nodded, returning to his previous position. “The theory is sound,” he said. “And you are correct: the risks are no greater than if we were to remain as is, the creature slowly sapping our combined strength until these walls fail.” He lifted his chin, and Jim could have sworn he saw a flash of humor pass over Spock’s expression. “Under these conditions in fact, a ‘last stand’ does seem to be the most…logical approach?”

Jim snorted out a laugh. “You know what?” he said. “I think I agree with you, Mr. Spock.” As Spock dipped his head in acknowledgment, Jim sobered.  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So, we’re doing this?”

Spock’s eyes flashed to his. “We may try.”

Pressing his lips together in thought, Jim said, “Do we need to be awake for this to work?”

“I need to be able to directly access the dilithium crystals on the ring. It is like…” Spock’s face turned pensive. “It is like opening my mind to an extra chamber. We must bring the creature—its katra—into the new space. When my mind withdraws, it has a physical form to return to, the link between the physical and the mental forms a particular bond that disallows my own entrapment. A bridge, essentially. The creature has no such anchor, so it may remain trapped.”

Jim grimaced. “I don’t think I really get what you just said, but I’m going to trust that you know what you’re doing.”

“I will not have the strength to force it alone,” Spock reminded him. “I will need your assistance. Once you give me the ring, we will need to re-establish a shallow mental connection.”

“You can’t just do it through me? Here? I’m already touching it, technically.”

“Vulcans are touch telepaths. I may sense the resonance of the dilithium through you, but I do not have the ability to trap the creature within it without being in direct contact with the material myself. You will need to give it to me.”

“Naturally,” sighed Jim. “Couldn’t have been easy, could it?” The corner of his mouth twitched up. “You’re definitely going to have to hold the steering wheel on this one, you know that, right? Like, I’ll help you as best as I can, but I really have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Of course,” Spock returned graciously, like he’d ever even considered handing the reins of such a delicate operation to a psi-null human. Jim shot him a wry look.

“Okay, so: we wake up, I pass the ring to you, you do your meld thing, and then we shove the scary monster back where the sun don’t shine. Sound good?”

Spock opened his mouth. Closed it. “The—sun—?”

“Obscure Earth metaphor, Mr. Spock. Don’t worry about it.”

“I see. Does this Earth metaphor have any actual relation to the suggested plan?”

“Not really.”

“Then,” said Spock, “I am in favor.”

“Excellent.” Jim rubbed his hands together. He could already feel the buzz of anticipation bubbling under his skin. “Can you wake us up out of whatever, I don’t know, coma Bones has put us in?”

“I will need a moment to prepare. I should be able to negate the chemicals’ effect on our bloodstreams, but I will need to do it carefully.” His focus turned quiet and inward, though his eyes remained intent. “We do not want to draw its attention until it is no longer avoidable.”

“No kidding.” Jim tapped his foot. “You want to do this now?”

“The longer we wait, the weaker we grow.” Spock was already concentrating. “Meanwhile, it remains the same. Eventually, our strength will no longer be enough. The chemical sedation will no longer be enough.” He raised his chin, gaze sharp, nostrils flared. Now that there was something resembling a plan before them, he seemed single-minded and driven, a man possessed by his mission. “The longer we wait, the more danger to your ship.”

The change was not a bad look on him, Jim thought, and then hastily pushed the thought aside. “Then let’s do it,” he said. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Close your eyes,” said Spock. “I will begin.”

#

The wake-up was a strange feeling, as slow as Spock’s initial meld had been fast. He already felt like he was awake, here in the meld, but as Spock concentrated, Jim began to feel aware of other things. His bloodstream clearing, the fog lifting from his mind, he felt an uncomfortable pinch at his elbow. His knee, which had been pretty quiet, began to twinge repeatedly.

There was an incessant, irritatingly persistent beeping noise. He could smell antiseptic. In the meld, Spock gripped his fingers tightly. “I will need to break the break the barrier,” he warned, “if we are to fight.”

Jim squeezed his hand back, jaw set. “I’m ready.”

“The ring,” Spock said. “Don’t forget the ring.”

Jim nodded.

“Now!” Spock ordered.

The cave collapsed.

Light flashed in front of Jim’s eyes. In the back of his mind, he felt the creature scream to awareness, the stain of it screeching to the forefront of his skull. He gasped in pain, fire curling through his body. He opened his eyes for real, eyes to the sickbay, and found himself staring Spock straight in the face, the fingers of Spock’s right hand still on the meldpoints of his face, their left hands still clasped together.

“What in the blazes?” McCoy bellowed from somewhere beyond his vision as the biobed’s calm beeping blared into a full cacophony of chaos. “Jim?”

“Spock!” Jim wheezed. He shook Spock’s shoulder. “Spock!” The creature was in his head now. It was clamoring for control. He could hear its slimy voice—

“ _No_ ,” Spock snarled, and wrenched his own eyes open. “You cannot have him.” He broke the meld the rest of the way, pulling his hand away from Jim’s face, but only so that he could fumble down to Jim’s left hand.

“The ring,” groaned Jim. He tried to offer his hand to Spock, but it was beyond his control now. “ _Please_ ,” he tried to say, but his tongue no longer belonged to him.

“Jim, for god’s sake. Hold still! Hey, you! Let go of him. Nurse!” McCoy’s large hand, confident, warm, doctor’s hand, landed on Jim’s wrist. Jim felt it, remembered it, remembered how it had stitched him together, held his hand through pain and through years. He knew that hand.

And so did the creature.

“What—?” said McCoy, as fire traveled up his arm. It reached his chest and bloomed through. “Damn it—” his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.

“No!” Jim stumbled off the bed, reaching for him, dropping the ring, hoping Spock caught it. “Bones!” He yanked impatiently at the tubes attached to his arm, pulling away from the machines that had been hooked up to his body. “You have to fight it!”

On the ground, McCoy’s body began to shiver and shake.

“Jim,” said Spock urgently, “Jim, we need to—”

An inhumanly strong hand grabbed at Jim’s lapels. “This one’s mine!” it snarled, in a mutation of McCoy’s voice, and flashed open eyes of fire.

Jim glared right back at it. “Let him go!” he demanded. The creature laughed its high, careening laugh.

“Let him go!” it mocked, and threw Jim away. Jim grunted as his back slammed into the biobed. It then caught sight of Spock. He was sitting up, but that was about as far as he’d gotten, struggling to get his body to cooperate after so long in stasis. “ _Vulcan_ ,” the thing that had been McCoy, snarled. “You will pay.”

“What on earth?” exclaimed Chapel, as the doors to the sickbay slid open. She dropped her PADD, and it hit the ground with a large clatter.

The distraction was enough. “Code Seventeen!” Jim shouted at her, and kicked the waste bin at McCoy. Nurse Christine Chapel, who’d gone through the same Starfleet Training he had, and arguably knew more codes than even Jim, also knew that the best option when given the code for ‘A Hostile Alien Onboard Has Brainwashed—or something—My Crewmate,’ was to shoot first, ask questions later.

Chapel immediately pulled her phaser out of her belt and shot McCoy. The stun setting made him reel back, growling.

“Help me with him!” Jim said, indicating Spock. Chapel hurried over towards them, and helped him get Spock to his feet. “Bridge,” rasped Jim. Chapel nodded. She shot McCoy one more time, before the three of them fled out the door of the medical bay, Spock supported by Jim and Chapel.

 _“Vulcan!”_ McCoy howled behind them. _“Du tevakh!”_

“What in god’s name happened to Leonard?” Chapel gasped, as they ran, trying to keep Spock propped upright between them. “Has he gone insane?”

“It is,” said Jim, gritting his teeth through the pain in his knee and the stitch in his side, “a really long story.” He slammed his hand down on the next ship-wide communicator they passed, leaving Chapel to take most of Spock’s weight. She grunted, but stayed firm. “This is Kirk speaking, we have a code seventeen. Yes, you heard that right, code seventeen on Dr. McCoy. Get to your stations immediately."

“My apologies,” said Spock quietly to Chapel, as Jim reached over and pulled an alarm. It immediately started to blare. “My legs do not appear to be working properly at the moment.”

“I noticed,” said Chapel. She breathed a sigh of relief when Jim ducked back under Spock’s arm and picked up the slack. “Captain?”

“Bridge,” said Jim brusquely. “Come on.”

Jim was rarely grateful for the size difference between the _Enterprise_ and the _Bounty_ . Here, however, was one occasion where he was extremely glad for the _Bounty_ ’s smaller stature. They scurried up the corridor, McCoy in hot pursuit. Almost to the Bridge, they met a panicked Chekov, who at first mistook them for the invading hostile aliens, almost stunning the three of them before Chapel managed to wrestle away his firearm.

“Very sorry!” said Chekov, when Jim glared at him. He held up his hands defensively. “You’re the one who told me it is shoot first, ask later, Captain.”

“Yeah, but not me!” Jim said, injured.

“Your crew seems very well-practiced when it comes to implementing Code Seventeen,” Spock observed.

“Yeah,” sighed Jim, moving so that Chekov could help them carry Spock as well. “It happens more often than you’d think.”

“Hello,” said Chekov brightly, to Spock. “My name is Pavel Chekov—”

“Could we get a move on?” Chapel snapped. She glanced over her shoulder as the sounds of the creature’s rage, shrieking in McCoy’s voice, “There’ll be time for introductions later.”

In mutual agreement and now with Chekov’s help, they sprinted the rest of the way.

“What in the blazes?” said Scotty, sitting in the poor excuse for the captain’s chair, as the four of them stumbled through the doorway and onto the bridge. Uhura and Sulu stood in surprise as well.

“Shut the door, Chekov!” Jim ordered. Chekov’s fingers moved over the panel, and the door jerkily complied. They caught a flash of McCoy’s face, red with rage, flecked with spittle as he charged at them.

_SLAM._

“Door’s shut, Captain,” Chekov said breathlessly, turning to them. “I’ll try to jam it.”

“Foolish Vulcan. Foolish little humans. A door can be easily opened as well as shut,” came the muffled voice on the other side. There was the clear sound of a finger jamming into the keypad on the door panel. And then jamming it again. And again. And again.

The door didn’t budge.

“Oh yeah,” Jim drawled to the creature through the wall. “Sorry about the door. This old ship has its little quirks, you know. We were totally going to get that repaired sometime. Our bad.”

There was a noise of wordless rage on the other side, and then the, all too familiar, sound of a very heavy boot coming into violent contact with the wall.

“Oh my god in heaven,” said Scotty prayerfully. He patted the armrest of the captain’s chair. “At least she’s dependable for that!”

“Scotty?” Jim said, squinting at him. “What are you doing on the bridge?”

“What am I—?” said Scott, sputtering. “What are _you_ doing on the bridge, Captain? You were in sickbay!” He pointed at Spock. “With him!”

“Valid point,” Jim allowed.

“Jim, what is going on?” Uhura was looking with increasing concern at the door McCoy was hammering away at on the other side.

“Um,” said Jim. Several explanations ran through his mind, none of them exactly simple. He looked to Spock for help. Spock just shrugged at him, as if to say, _they’re your crew_. Jim sighed, and went with what he thought was the most succinct explanation. “Bones is possessed by the Vulcan devil and he wants to kill us all.”

Everyone else on the bridge stared at him.

“Except Spock, I think,” Jim added, thoughtfully. “I think he just wants to take over Spock’s brain again.”

“What?” barked Uhura.

“Jim, that is an extremely inaccurate depiction of events.”

“Vulcan has a devil?” Sulu said.

“Eh,” said Jim. “I mean, not really.”

“He’s not really possessed?” said Uhura.

“Oh no,” said Jim, pointing at the door. _WHAM._ “He is definitely possessed.”

Spock straightened as well as he could while being supported by two other people. “The ring,” he said to Jim in an undertone. Jim blanched.

“Fuck!” he said. _WHAM._ “Spock, I—I dropped it. I thought you caught it!”

“You dropped it?” Spock demanded, and there was definitely a crack in that Vulcan façade of his. “Where?”

“In the—” _WHAM_. Cracks were beginning to form in the metal. “In the sickbay!”

“Uh, guys?” said Sulu, nodding towards the door. The cracks were getting bigger. _WHAM_. “Is there a plan to deal with this, or…”

“ _Ghuy’cha_!” Spock growled, which had Uhura looking over to gawk at him. “We must go back and retrieve it.”

 _WHAM. WHAM. WHAM._ “You know, Spock. Something tells me that’s not the best idea.”

“Retrieve what?” Chapel asked from his other side.

Jim was already casting his eyes around the bridge, mentally cataloguing what was there, trying to figure out what, if anything, they could use instead.

“Jim, we do not have—”

_WHAM._

“I know, I’m just trying to think of something we could use instead. Damn it!” Fuck, they were all going to get killed, and it was going to be all his fault. His stupid, fucking butterfingers.

“Retrieve what?” repeated Chapel.

“The ring,” Jim groaned. “The stupid, fucking—”

“You need a ring?” said Chekov, turning towards them.

“No, I need the _fucking_ —” he froze. Shit. Shitshitshitshit. Of _course._ He needed— “Scotty!”

Scotty jumped, his gaze swiveling from the door over to Jim’s face. “Captain?” he said uneasily.

Dragging Spock along, Jim lurched over to him. “Scotty, I need to see your ring.”

“You need to see my what?”

“Your ring!” Jim insisted, holding out his hand, palm up. “Your—the goddamn engineering Starfleet Academy class ring! Do you have it on you or not?”

“I—” said Scotty. “I mean, I couldn’t just throw it away, Captain. There was some sentimentality, you know.”

“Just give it to me!” Jim snapped. Shocked, Scotty wrestled it off his finger and deposited it in Jim’s hand.

“Captain, I am fond of it,” Scotty told him, looking a bit miserable. Jim immediately felt horrible.

“Yes, Scotty. I’m sorry. I swear, I’ll explain when this is all over.” He turned to slap the ring into Spock’s waiting palm. “Spock?”

Spock already had his eyes closed. After another moment, they shot open. “It will suffice,” he said shortly.

“Well, good, because,” there was an unholy screech of metal being strained beyond its capacity, “I think our time’s just about up.”

Almost before the words had finished exiting his mouth, the door crashed open. _“Fa-wak tor du ra karthau_ , Spock!” the creature snarled. McCoy’s mouth was stretched out in the gruesome facsimile of a grin, his hands flexing empty at his sides, blood from cuts from the metal door dripping onto the ground. _“Duhsu!”_

But unlike before, he didn’t rush them. He seemed to understand, rather, that they had nowhere else to run. He was taking his time, Jim realized, with a rush of bile to the throat at the sight of that eerie grin. The creature wanted to savor this.

“Stay back,” he warned his crew, voice low. “Don’t let it touch you.”

“Yeah right,” said Sulu, already unfolded from his pilot’s station and standing behind them.

“Very funny, Captain,” Uhura said tersely. She edged toward them. The creature caught sight of her face and grinned.

“The former Lieutenant Uhura,” it purred.

She looked surprised to see that it knew her name, but then her face hardened. “Go screw yourself,” she said. It sneered at her.

“Jim,” Spock said quietly. Jim swung to him. Spock wiggled his fingers ever so slightly, and inclined his head. Jim’s eyes widened in understanding. But how to…he glanced over at Chapel, still supporting Spock on the other side.

“Christine,” he said. The creature was stepping towards them now, McCoy’s boots moving with an odd gait, like it hadn’t quite figured out the movement of the human body.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Shoot the fucker.”

Without hesitation, she complied, and Jim made his move.

In the years that would come, Jim would never be able to fully explain why he believed, in that moment, that a three-person-strong, full-scale, Old American-style football tackle was the best way to get Spock, himself, and a sparkling dilithium ring whose loss his engineer would probably never forgive him for, into a mutual mindmeld with millennia-old evil spirit possessing his medic.

But as the creature reared back when the force of Chapel’s stun shot hit him clean in the chest, and Jim, with a roar, his knee screaming with the weight, launched himself—and his companions—at McCoy’s body, to bring them all careening to the ground in a heap, where Spock’s sure fingers could find their way to the meldpoints on McCoy’s face, and then on to Jim’s while Chapel scrambled away as best she could, well. The best Jim could say was that in the moment, all he could think was that truly the best defense, was a good offense.

Spock didn’t murmur his words that time. He commanded them, he shouted them, and Jim was picked up unawares and hurled into the mindmeld. But he wanted to be there this time, he reminded himself. This was the goal. This was the goddamn moment. He tucked himself into the hurricane, and let it spiral him down towards Spock.

_Spock!_

There was already a battle raging up ahead. Flame and oil intertwined. The fire was burning away what, to Jim’s mental projection, looked like dead twigs trailing out of some greenery hidden below the chaos of them.

 _“We need him to let go of your friend,”_ Spock told him, and Jim understood. The growth, the green, the life—that was McCoy, that was—

Rage, hot and unexpected burned in his chest. _“You let him go, you bastard!”_ Jim snarled, and sent a gust of energy, of heat, of fuel for Spock’s flame, towards Spock. Armed with it, Spock’s spirit brightened white hot, the dead branches beneath smoking away into nothingness.

 _“Jim!”_ shouted Spock, and Jim’s mind was already moving. He needed to get McCoy away from this, he needed to protect his friend. As Spock and the creature vied for dominance, Jim used their distraction to slide between, practicing what Spock had taught him about shielding, about making himself unremarkable, unknowable.

He cradled McCoy’s essence in his hands, his friend’s _katra_ , his soul. He felt McCoy’s heart beating, green with life, and strong, even through the trauma. _“I have you,”_ Jim told it. _“I have you.”_ He felt its acknowledgement, its trust. Just for a moment, Jim reveled in it.

 _“Jim!”_ Spock cried out. Jim looked over. During his distraction, Spock had begun to lose whatever semblance of upper hand he’d had. The oily stain was now oozing over him, wrapping him in tendrils of slick, bent on extinguishing him. _“Jim, please!”_

 _“Stay safe!”_ Jim ordered McCoy, and turned back towards the fight.

He didn’t know what he had to do. He didn’t know how to beat this thing. But _Spock_ knew, and that was all that mattered. Taking heed of all the strange lessons he’d learned about mental projection, energy, and soul, Jim opened himself to Spock. It was strikingly easy, like two mirrors angled each other just right for the light to bounce between them. He reached Spock just as their energies joined.

It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. Training Jim’s psychic receptors had been gray and tasteless compared to this joining. Alien sights, alien scents, alien _feelings_ , rushed through him. Unerringly and in an instant, he could have told anyone that Spock loved _plomeek_ and hated _c’torr_ , especially the way his father’s second cousin prepared it. He could have told them that Spock used to sneak out of his family home and walk out to the desert, just to appreciate the naked stars. He could have told them that Spock, despite his stoicism, loved his mother, and even his father, though he wasn’t sure if the sentiment was—or even could be—returned. He felt a pale thread where an old bond had shriveled away, and felt the distant pain of loss of a woman to a Klingon fighter. He felt—

He felt the tightening of panic, as the creature proved stronger than he’d hoped. Spock was trying, guiding, cajoling it into that new, empty space, but it was fighting him every step of the way. He needed more. He needed more! Sudoc had had whole armies, and so what chance did just the two of them, Spock and Jim, stand against it?

Jim felt a presence at his side, like a hand had grabbed his wrist. _“What?”_ he said, surprised.

 _“Jim, the shit you get me into. I swear,”_ McCoy sighed. Jim gasped as McCoy’s strength hit him. “ _Come on_ ,” McCoy said, _“Pass that along to your pointy-eared friend. We don’t have all day!”_

Aching with pride, and terror, with love and with feeling, Jim obeyed. His link to Spock was so open already, they were closer to one than two, he barely had to consider it before McCoy’s energy was pulsing along their strange chain, finally giving Spock the strength he needed to make that final, desperate shove.

The creature wailed as it hit the walls of its new prison. _“No!”_ It reached a last, grasping tendril out to Spock, holding him there. _“No!”_

With all that he could and with McCoy anchoring him, Jim yanked. Spock slid free. The crystal prison slammed shut. Outside their mental projection, in the real world, Scotty’s class ring fell from limp fingers onto the floor.

 _“Jim,”_ said Spock, and there was a myriad of meanings behind it, but chief among them relief. _“Jim.”_

 _“We did it,”_ Jim said. _“We—holy shit!”_

 _“This is the worst dream I’ve ever had_ ,” McCoy told them both.

Jim laughed. Spock sent McCoy a wash of acknowledgement. He was tired, Jim could tell. Spock was holding on to the meld with the last of his strength, like it was the only thing in the world he could rely on to maintain its logical function. Jim smiled. _“Come on, Spock,”_ he said gently. _“You can let go now.”_

_“I—”_

The meld was starting to fade. McCoy’s presence had already vanished.

 _“I’ll be there on the other side,”_ Jim said. _“I promise.”_

Spock sighed, a long breath of release, and let go.

Jim opened his eyes. He was lying in an incredibly odd position, his body twisted half on top of Spock, elbows and knees jammed up against McCoy, who was lying beneath the both of them. His knee hurt like hell, and his head pounded. Below them, McCoy groaned.

“Hell,” said Jim. He lifted his head up to see several pairs of eyes staring down at the three of them. “Hey,” he said, and tried on a lopsided smile. Uhura looked like she either wanted to hug him or murder him. Chapel kept a firm hand on her phaser.

“Is the doctor still possessed?” Chekov asked uneasily. “Captain, you are all right?”

McCoy coughed. “Jim,” he said weakly, though his voice was muffled by the floor. “I fucking told you that ship was bad news.”

Jim closed his eyes and let the back of his head thunk back onto Spock’s sternum. “Yeah,” he said. “You told me.”

“And your Vulcan weighs a ton,” McCoy complained. He was obviously trying to wriggle away now, but was completely pinned to the ground by Jim and Spock’s combined sprawl.

“That,” Spock dourly told the ceiling, “is an exaggeration.”

“For god’s sake,” said Uhura, and then she and Sulu were bending forward to drag Jim off the top of the pile. He swayed in their grasp, before finding his shaky footing. Sulu let go and turned to help Chapel with getting Spock off the ground, while Jim leaned against Uhura.

“Hey,” he said, still a bit dazed.

“Hey yourself, Captain,” she said, unusually tolerantly. Chekov and Scotty were trying to drag McCoy to his feet as well.

“Do you think you could send a subspace call to Vulcan?” Jim’s gaze swayed towards Spock. Chapel and Sulu had him well in hand, already moving back towards sickbay. “I think they might like to know about this.”

“You think?” said Uhura sardonically.

“Oh yeah.” Jim caught sight of captain’s chair. “Well, now that the whole hostile take-over thing’s been dealt with—”

“Oh no you don’t!” shouted Chapel, already beyond the busted bridge door. “Bring his ass straight to sickbay!”

Jim sighed. At the threshold, still leaning on Uhura, he turned to his remaining crew. “You’re all awesome,” he said sincerely. “Please don’t touch that fucking ring.” He looked over at Scotty. “Scotty, I’m so sorry. I will literally buy you a new one.”

He got a snort in return. “Captain, you don’t have any credits.”

“True,” said Jim. “You can have mine, then.”

“I don’t want yours!” sputtered Scotty, but he was smiling.

Jim shrugged. “Your loss,” he said, as finally, with Uhura’s urging, he left the bridge for the sickbay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Rubidiatium' is not a canon mineral. Or a real mineral. Obviously. 
> 
> Vulcan Translation:
> 
> Du tevakh - 'your death'  
> Fa-wak tor du ra karthau - 'you will do as I command'  
> Duhsu - 'fool'
> 
> Klingon Translation:  
> Ghuy’cha - 'damn it'


	7. Chapter 7

Jim stalled outside of sickbay. Even four days later, his whole body felt slightly off-kilter, wobbly. He was plagued by a background of headaches, almost like he’d had a concussion. He leaned against the wall and let out a quiet sigh.

“I can hear you out there, Jim,” came McCoy’s voice. “You can come on in. Your Vulcan’s still out cold, don’t worry about waking him.” Jim straightened.

“Is he doing all right?” He passed through the threshold. With the help of the crew, the sickbay had mostly been put to rights, although there were a few dents here and there that would need some extra care. It was much smaller than the sickbay on the Enterprise had been, with only two biobeds, which had certainly made the cleanup less painful. Like it had since the conclusion of events four days ago, Jim’s gaze swept on autopilot over to Spock’s prone form. He was lying on his back, hands clasped on the front of his chest in a pose unnervingly like the one they’d first found him in. The reminder gave Jim an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Still in that healing trance of his.” McCoy swiveled around in his chair. He didn’t really have an office, but there was a corner of the sickbay with a cluttered desk that he’d claimed as his own. “He said he knew what he was doing.”

“I’m sure he does.” Spock’s face was very still, but Jim could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest. For some reason, the sight of it calmed him.

“Gives me the willies,” McCoy grunted, as he swept about his desk in search of the PADD containing Jim’s patient files.

“I don’t particularly like it either.” Jim sat down in the extra chair. It squeaked unnervingly, but held.

“Hmm,” said McCoy. He had found the PADD, and flicked it on. He balanced it on his lap as he crossed his legs to turn to Jim. “How’ve you been doing?”

It was part of the discharge, Jim knew, but he still didn’t like talking about it. If anybody could relate, though, he knew it was McCoy. “I feel like my head’s been scrambled with an eggbeater,” he said honestly.

McCoy jotted something down. “Still got those headaches?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Sleep?”

“It’s all right.” That was nearly a lie, Jim knew, but he’d caught his four hours last night, so he figured he was in the clear for the moment.

“How are your balance issues?”

Jim pursed his lips. “A little better.” He’d only lost his footing completely once today, and had managed to catch himself on the captain’s chair before meeting the ground. He’d pretended not to notice the concerned looks of every other person on the bridge, but it was getting hard to continue to ignore. “The knee’s not so bad, either.”

McCoy put down the PADD to look at him gently. “You know, Spock told me the potential for brain damage after what he did monkeying around with your psychic centers.”

“He didn’t have a choice,” Jim said, oddly defensive. “Bones, I asked him to do that.”

“I know, I know.” McCoy started with the new tricorder they’d taken off Spock’s ship. With Uhura and Spock’s help, he’d managed to program it for human-normal. “All I’m saying is, before he went under, he made sure to mention it to me. Seemed pretty concerned. For a Vulcan, that is.” The whirr of the tricorder was soothing in its familiarity. Jim found himself nodding.

“He does feel, Bones.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” McCoy put the tricorder down and went after Jim’s head himself. “Tilt your head down.” Jim complied. “Has the pain medication been helping the headaches at all?”

“A little.”

“Hmm.” McCoy sounded displeased. “I’ll try something else then. Maybe when the Vulcans finally get here they’ll have something we can use.”

“Nothing on Spock’s ship?”

McCoy snorted. “Like hell am I going to let any of the crew go back there.” His fingers were gentle as they prodded Jim’s scalp. “Tilt your head back up.” He felt along Jim’s temples and down his jawline. “What about nightmares?”

Jim was silent.

“Hell,” McCoy said. “I’ve got ‘em myself. And you and Spock were linked together for, Jesus,” he whistled, “almost thirty-six hours.” He dropped his hands from Jim’s face, but didn’t move his chair away. “Jim?” he said softly, and Jim drew a shuddering breath.

“Sometimes it’s like I’m still back there,” he admitted. “When I close my eyes, try to sleep, I,” he swallowed. “I can feel it break into the cave, break into me and I—” his voice broke. “In the dream, I, I hurt people, Bones. I hurt Spock. I hurt you. God.” He scrubbed at his face. “It’s—fuck, Bones. I just feel…” he trailed off.

“Unclean,” said McCoy, and Jim’s gaze snapped to him. McCoy gave him a wry smile. “You think I don’t know?”

“I’m sorry, Bones,” Jim said, abashed. God, his head was starting to pound again. “I’m sorry I—it was my call, and you took the hit for it. I’m sorry I put you through that.”

McCoy’s eyebrow went up in affront. “Now, you listen here,” he said gruffly. He clapped his hand around the back of Jim’s neck and drew him in. “I was prepared for all kinds of disease, danger, whatever. You might’ve made a call, but I could’ve said no. None of us could’ve expected what was on that ship, you hear? And when it—when that _thing_ took me over, I was mad, yeah. I was scared, but you know what I didn’t do?” When Jim shook his head, McCoy said, “I didn’t despair. And you know why?” He leaned in closer, forehead touching Jim’s. “Cause you’re my brother, Jimmy. I knew you’d come for me. Even when that thing had me kicking down that door, I knew that for certain.” He squeezed the back of Jim’s neck. “I knew you’d come through.”

Foreheads touching, they breathed together for several heartbeats, until McCoy let his hand fall away, and pushed his chair back.

“Thanks, Bones,” Jim said quietly.

McCoy patted his shoulder. “Come back in a few hours,” he said. “I’ll see what I can mix up for you for those headaches. And tell you what, if we make berth someplace with actual decent medical facilities, I want to run your noggin through a real scanner, just in case.”

“I don’t know,” Jim hedged, but let it drop when McCoy scowled at him.

“It ain’t up to you, Jimbo,” he said. Jim huffed at him, but managed a weak smile.

“Sure, Bones.” Jim got to his feet, using the side of McCoy’s desk for balance.

McCoy grunted. “Damn right it’s sure.” He sent a sidelong glance past Jim, to where Spock still lay in his healing trance. “When are those Vulcans scheduled to get here, anyway?”

“They said they were sending someone out almost immediately.” Jim shoved his hands in his pockets, looking over at Spock as well. “They said they’ll rendezvous with us tomorrow, though, so. We’ll see.”

“Tomorrow?” McCoy tapped his stylus along the side of his leg. “That’s pretty fast. We’re a long ways out from Vulcan.”

“Well,” said Jim, “I’d guess they want to hold down the situation before Starfleet thinks it needs to get itself involved. Can’t say I blame them.”

McCoy snorted. “Hold down the situation,” he muttered. “We’ve pretty much already nailed it right to the floor for them.” He chucked his stylus over to the desk and stood as well. “Any explanation for why they didn’t show their damned faces before we had to clean up their mess?”

“Not a word,” Jim said. On his way over to the doorway, he stopped at the side of Spock’s biobed to look down at him. It felt almost peculiar to view him with his physical eyes. High cheekbones, aquiline nose, pale skin. Jim touched one light finger onto Spock’s wrist. His pulse hummed reassuringly, Vulcan-quick and full of life. “Tell me if something changes,” he said. McCoy’s sharp eyes tracked the motion of Jim’s hand as it pulled away.

“You’ll be the first to know.”

After Jim left sickbay, he dawdled on his way back to the bridge. There wasn’t really a need for him to be there, he knew. Scotty may have gone back down to his engines, but Sulu had the command well in hand. They were still circling around the _Bolayek_ , so it wasn’t like they were going anywhere interesting. The worst that seemed like it could happen was having to fight off some other scrapper that wanted a piece of the Vulcan ship before the Vulcans got there, but that didn’t seem too likely.

Jim headed for the galley instead. Bones probably would’ve had his head if he knew, but Jim thought that after the week he’d had, a nice bowl of non-replicated chocolate ice cream was just the thing he needed to regain his equilibrium.

They’d gotten the ice cream last time they’d passed through a human-run Starbase, almost two months ago. It was the dregs of it, Jim thought, a bit mournfully as he dug in his spoon, but it would have to do. He had just brought the spoon to his mouth when the door to the galley slid open again. He startled, but it was just Uhura. She eyed him for a moment, and then turned to rummage in another one of the storage compartments. Jim watched her.

“We were worried about you, you know,” she said, when she turned around. She extended the cold can of un-replicated whipped cream to him. Jim’s eyes lit up as he took it. “I was worried.”

Jim exhaled. “You and me both,” he said. The edge of her mouth quirked up as he liberally sprayed the whipped cream over his bowl. When he was satisfied with the coverage, he began to eat. “What’s up?”

“Oh, just keeping an eye on you,” she said bluntly. She had also gotten a jar of maraschino cherries out of storage, and held one out to him. Jim rolled his eyes at her response, but he did take a cherry.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” he said, through a mouth full of ice cream. She patted his shoulder.

“Do I look like I care?” He glowered at her, and she laughed. “Tell me about Spock,” she said.

“Why do you want to know?” The ice cream definitely had some freezer burn to it, but Jim was enjoying it too much to care.

“You’re worried about him,” she said. “He must be an interesting guy, to make that kind of impact on you so fast.”

Jim huffed. “I’m not worried about him.” He shoved another spoonful into his mouth.

She gave him a look. Jim sighed.

“He was hooked up to my brain for a day and a half,” he said crossly. “You can’t help but to get to know a guy.”

“Must’ve been weird.”

“Understatement of the year,” Jim said, pointing the spoon at her. “I mean, you hear stories about it, but man. Telepathy is something else.”

“I’ll bet,” she murmured. She placed a hand on his arm. “Tell me about him,” she said again.

Jim stared down at the bowl of ice cream. It was almost empty, but his head still hurt and the room still tilted. The only thing that felt even remotely tolerable about his body right now, was a low and faint thrum of warmth at the base of his skull. He looked up at Uhura. “I don’t know what c’torr is, but Spock fucking hates it,” he said, “and he used to have a childhood pet the size of a small bear.”

She smiled. “Go on.”

#

The stomach ache was inevitable after the ice cream, Jim thought, but he didn’t regret it. He didn’t regret the talk with Uhura either, though it had left him feeling more drained than even his meeting with Bones.

He never made it back to the bridge, instead electing to retire to his quarters to lie on his back on top of the covers, and stare at the ceiling. His body still felt weak, and he hated it. He wanted to be doing something, helping Scotty fix the water system or Bones catalogue his questionably obtained, newly stocked pharmacy. Anything but lying on his bed, brain too jiggly to even focus on a book or a holo, and with nothing but time on his hands and memories on his mind.

Inevitably, his thoughts circled back to Spock. Not Spock as he was now, healing himself in sickbay, but Spock as he had appeared in the meld, as he had appeared in his own memories. How much had the experience changed him, Jim wondered. What kind of a man had Spock been, before he’d spent three years battling evil incarnate inside his own skull? Would Jim have even recognized him?

Jim felt a familiar flash of anger; Spock shouldn’t have had to go through that. He knew it probably wasn’t fair (or logical, as Spock might have pointed out), but Jim was ready to take the whole Vulcan planet to task for their failure to retrieve him. What absolute bullshit.

Three years could probably change a man, but two days seemed like a stretch. At least, Jim didn’t think he had changed, despite the experience. He still felt like the same person, even if his nightmares had developed a whole new universe of exciting characters, and he couldn’t walk a straight line down the corridor without pitching over halfway through. That was minor stuff. Window dressing.

At his core though, he felt the same. Maybe a bit more…open? Exposed? He wasn’t sure if those were the words to describe the leftover feeling that his brain was ready to receive signals it hadn’t been able to comprehend before, but he was lacking any better vocabulary. Hell, he doubted a language on Earth had the vocabulary to explain the sensation.

A side effect, he thought ruefully, but it would fade. He’d be back to normal soon enough.

There was a knock on his door. Jim raised himself on his elbows. “Come in,” he called. He was honestly expecting McCoy back to check on him, maybe drop off some new concoction meant to tame Jim’s headaches. When Spock poked his head around the doorframe instead, Jim nearly toppled off the bed. “Spock!” he said, when he had regained control of his limbs. “What—I thought you were in sickbay? Asleep?”

“I was.” Though Jim had technically already given him permission to enter, he lingered in the doorway until Jim waved him in the rest of the way.

“Come in, come in. I don’t understand how you’re even upright. God knows I’m having enough trouble with it.” Jim struggled to sit back up again, and patted the bed next to him invitingly. It didn’t occur to him that that could be construed as a rather intimate invitation until Spock was already sitting. His ship was small, his quarters were small, and his bed was small. Spock’s weight settled onto the mattress, and they were suddenly a lot closer than Jim had bargained for. To distract from it, Jim said lightly, “What’s up?”

Spock, bless him, actually glanced up at the ceiling. Jim snorted out a laugh, and when Spock turned back to quirk an eyebrow at him in confusion, it turned into a full-on fit of the giggles. Spock’s expression morphed into first one of alarm, and then mild disgruntlement, as he waited for Jim to get a handle on himself.

“Jim,” he said, a full minute later, with the air of the long-suffering.

“Sorry, Spock, sorry,” Jim wheezed. He wiped his streaming eyes. “It’s been a hell of a week.”

“Yes, so Dr. McCoy has given me to understand.” Spock gingerly patted Jim’s back when Jim started to cough.

“Oh yeah?” Jim took a couple of deep breaths. His headache was back again, probably his own fault, this time. His stomach at least had begun to settle. “Bones is a total gossip, you know.”

“He said you were not…” Spock hesitated, then continued delicately, “not as you were.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “He worries too much. I’ll be fine.” He smiled at Spock. “I mean, look at you. A few days of a healing trance and you look, uh. Well.” Jim wasn’t lying, either. Spock looked significantly less corpse-like than he had previously. He was wearing a borrowed grey shirt with a faded stethoscope on it that Jim surmised he must have gotten from McCoy. He was still thin, but his legs were obviously functioning now, and there was color in his cheeks, a purposeful sense to his movements. He looked a lot more like his picture from the crew manifest, although there were certain lines to his face, a certain look in his eyes when they caught the light just right, that harkened to his ordeal.

Spock folded his arms. “Vulcans possess the ability to heal ourselves at an accelerated rate,” he said severely. “I was not given to understand that humans had the same skill.”

“Spock,” Jim sighed, but Spock wasn’t finished.

“It is possible—no, it is _likely_ that I am at fault.” Spock’s eyes flashed to Jim’s. “Your balance, your headaches. Given the nature of our interactions, the strain to the human brain, I do not know how long it will be before your mind, if left to its own devices, will return to, as you say, ‘normal,’”

“Jesus, it’s like Bones has never even heard of doctor-patient confidentiality.” Jim grimaced. “Spock, look. You did what you had to do. I knew the score, okay? I don’t want you blaming yourself for something I freaking told you to do.” It didn’t escape him that he was essentially stealing McCoy’s pep talk from earlier, but since the asshole had gone and ratted Jim out, Jim figured it was his due. Besides, do as I say, not as I do, right? “So my head’s a little funky. It’ll get better. It’s only been four days.”

“I would like to fix it.”

Jim forgot to breathe. “What, sorry?” he said blankly, when his lungs kicked in again. “What do you mean, _fix it_?”

“I,” said Spock. He shifted, folding his hands together on his lap. “I understand if you are reluctant to undertake another meld.”

“Hold up,” said Jim. “Another meld?”

“Yes.”

“I—” Jim’s first thought was that McCoy would definitely, absolutely, wholeheartedly, not approve. His second thought—

Spock said quietly, “I do not wish for you to suffer. Not on my account.”

Jim stared.

“Spock, I’m not, I’m not _suffering_.” He kind of was, actually, but it wasn’t a big deal. It was temporary. Bones would fix him.

Spock said, “Jim. Please.”

“Oh god,” Jim muttered. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bones is going to kill me.” He shook his head, and turned to focus back on Spock. “What did you have in mind?”

Spock took a deep breath. “I hypothesize that the prolonged meld with multiple individuals caused your brain to adapt overly much to its circumstances. So much so that it now has difficulty functioning as a single unit.” Jim paled a little at this.

“Exactly how sure are you about this hypothesis?”

“My species are innately telepathic. The post-meld symptoms you are experiencing: dizziness, headache, nausea, mood swings—”

“Wait, who said I was having mood swings?” Jim demanded. Spock gave him a long look. Jim flushed. “Go on.”

“Your symptoms are similar to what a Vulcan who has lost a bondmate, or several close family bonds, would experience. Vulcans cannot thrive without a certain level of mental connectivity. Humans however…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim said uncomfortably. “I’m getting the picture. So, you want to convince my brain that it’s okay to be single?”

“I would like to try,” said Spock. He endured it when Jim eyed him skeptically.

“Why didn’t you discuss this with McCoy?”

Spock pressed his lips together. “I did not know if the doctor would be receptive to the suggestion.”

“You don’t think he’d think the benefits would outweigh the risks.”

“I was unsure.”

“But you think they do.” Jim cupped his chin in his hands, and rested his elbows on his knees. He leaned forward, hunching in on himself.

“I do,” Spock said. He moved closer to Jim, just slightly. “It is your choice. I would not force a meld on you.”

“No,” Jim murmured, “of course not.” He unfolded from his position and twisted so that his torso faced Spock. He studied his face for a moment. Vulcans were said to be masters of emotion, so much so that looking one in the eye was no different than glancing through the endless depths of a very still lake. Jim didn’t know if he bought that. Spock didn’t feel like a still lake; he felt like a storm about to break.

Without thought, Jim reached a hand out to touch Spock’s face. Spock held very still, but he did not move away until, suddenly abashed, Jim let his hand fall.

“Sorry,” he said. His cheeks burned. “I wasn’t, um.”

“Jim.”

“Huh?” Drawn almost against his will, Jim lifted his gaze until it met Spock’s. Like tumblers clicking into place, their eyes locked. Spock leaned forward.

“Please, Jim,” he said. “Let me have your thoughts.”

His eyes fluttering shut, the word fell from his lips, as inexorable as it was inevitable. “Yes.”

Between one instant and the next, Spock’s long, sure fingers were pressed against his forehead and temple. Jim’s throat worked. “My mind to your mind,” said Spock. “My thoughts to your thoughts.”

The fall into the meld was less of a plunge and more of a slow immersion, like sliding into a hot bath on a cold winter’s night. Every nerve in Jim’s body sang. _This is right,_ they said, _they is what we want._ Spock was all around him, that familiar flare of warmth and surety. For the first time in four days Jim felt, hell, he felt _safe_.

Spock said, “ _Jim_.” And it was tender. He brushed his awareness against Jim’s much-abused psychic receptors, and it was a caress. “ _Let me help_ ,” he said, and the warmth at the base of Jim’s skull grew to a flame. “ _Please_.”

“ _I know you_ ,” Jim’s consciousness responded. “ _I trust you_.” And that was the way of it, Jim thought hazily, as he could feel Spock go to work.  Bones might’ve been his best friend—his family, even, but even Bones didn’t know him the way Spock did. How could he? Spock might not have known who Jim dated at the Academy, or how he got those medals gathering dust in storage back on Earth, but he knew Jim. He knew the center of him, the essence of him, his very soul. He hadn’t just seen Jim’s innermost self, he had been entwined with it, enmeshed with it, smothered in it.

And Jim knew Spock too, didn’t he? He knew him like déjà vu, like the only good part of a dream you couldn’t help but forget. Lazy, warm, Jim reached out to the brightness surrounding him. There was a flicker of surprise.

“ _Jim_ ,” Spock chided, “ _I am still working.”_

“ _I don’t care.”_ Jim gathered up his own sensations and pushed them at Spock. Was Spock feeling the same, here in the meld? If so, Jim didn’t understand how he could even focus in the first place.

“ _Jim_ ,” Spock sounded a little strangled that time. “ _If you would cease your distractions.”_

Smirking, Jim gathered himself to do it again, but he had barely poked at Spock that time before Spock had turned around and redirected it back at him. Unprepared for such an onslaught, Jim gasped. Heat traveled down from the base of his skull, zinged up his spine. His heartbeat sped up, his nerves sparked.

Spock dropped the meld.

Jim opened his eyes, breathing hard, to meet Spock’s gaze. Spock was staring at him, dazed. His chest rose and fell rapidly, his lips parted, and there was a darker flush to his cheeks. “You,” he said to Jim, “your mind is—” Jim licked his lips.

“Did it—did it work?” God, they were only an inch a part. Spock’s lips were swollen, Jim noticed, like he had bitten down on them. Spock took a moment to answer.

“I am unsure,” he said finally, and his gaze flickered down, then back up, settled on Jim’s mouth. “How do you—how do you feel?”

What a landmine of a question, Jim thought, borderline hysterically. Still, he took stock. “My head doesn’t hurt.”

“That.” Spock was visibly trying to collect himself. “That is positive.”

“Maybe…” Jesus, he was certifiably insane, Jim thought. He finished the sentence anyway. “Maybe you should um, you know. Stay,” he found himself saying. “You know. In case—”

“Yes.” The word was out of Spock’s mouth before Jim could even finish. Spock’s eyes widened, as if shocked by his own brazenness. “I mean,” he said, back peddling into formality. “That seems like the most logical course of action.”

“Uh huh.” The quick smile Jim sent his way could not have been described as anything else but indulgent. Spock looked away, but he was too slow to hide the tiny uptick at the corner of his mouth, or the way his eyes crinkled.

They didn’t discuss it. Still on top of the covers, Jim pivoted so his legs were back up on the bed. He scooted so that his head reached the pillow and his back hit the far wall. It was enough space for Spock, who slipped off his boots and lay down on his back beside him. Jim propped himself up on his elbow.

“What will you do when you go back to Vulcan?”

The response took a moment. “I do not know.”

Jim knew how much it cost him, that admittance of ignorance. His free hand crept up to clasp Spock’s shoulder, to travel down and rest as a warm weight on top of his arm. Spock stilled, and then breathed out, the tension in his muscles dissipating. Jim let himself lay down the rest of the way. He pressed his forehead to the side of Spock’s head. His scent was something new, something that hadn’t been in the meld.

“Is this normal?” he asked quietly, into the dark. “Do Vulcans—is this how your people feel all the time?”

“No,” Spock told him. “It is not.”

Jim squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn’t dizzy, his head didn’t hurt, but the warmth at the base of his skull lingered. He felt if he touched it just right, it might flare right to life again. “Do you mind?” _Do you mind that it’s me_ , he didn’t say.

“You saved my life,” said Spock.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe you honesty.”

“That could be dangerous.”

“It could,” Spock agreed. He shifted, then settled. “We have a saying,” he said. “ _Kaiidth_. What is, is. You lifted me from the darkness, Jim. You gave me your strength. You entrusted me with your katra. How could I but do the same in return?” He let out a long, slow, sigh. “My elders would no doubt be scandalized,” he said. “ _Kaiidth_. I do not wish to fight this.”

“That sounds an awful lot like a proposal.”

“I prefer to think of it as potential.”

“Oh?”

“New growth,” said Spock. “To borrow the metaphor.”

Jim tapped his fingers against Spock’s wrist. He swallowed. “The Vulcan ship is scheduled to arrive tomorrow,” he said.

Spock didn’t answer.

“I’ll miss you.”

Spock exhaled. He turned his arm over so that his palm was facing up, and clasped Jim’s hand. “You will never be alone.”

#

It was the incessant beeping of his communicator that woke him, some indeterminate number of hours later. It was on his nightstand, and Jim had to lean over a sleeping Spock to fumble for it. Spock didn’t stir.

“Yeah?” he said, voice rough with sleep. Mindful of his visitor, he tried to keep it low.

“Jim,” said McCoy. “The Vulcan’s missing. Have you seen him?”

Jim glanced down at the black cap of hair resting against his shoulder, but the motion and the noise evidently wasn’t enough to bother him, because Spock still hadn’t moved a muscle. Jim said into the communicator, “He’s with me. We got to talking and he fell asleep. He’s fine.”

There was a long pause. “Asleep, huh?” said McCoy finally, in a tone that made it sound like he very much doubted it.

“Do you want me to send you a picture?”

“Smartass. Make sure he _rests_ , damn it. I don’t know what that healing trance of his actually does, but I sincerely doubt it’s the same as a good night’s sleep.”

“No doubt,” said Jim. Spock shifted, and Jim pressed a hand to cradle the back of his head, smoothing down his hair. “I’ll watch him.”

“I’ll bet,” said McCoy dryly, and hung up before Jim could ask him what the hell he thought he meant by that.

Jim glanced over at the chronometer. Twenty-two hundred hours, ship’s time. He realized that he was still wearing his regular clothes and was still on top of the covers. The clothes weren’t really an issue, Jim thought, but his mouth felt sour. Carefully disentangling himself, he slid out the end of the bed and padded over to the door that led to the bathroom between his and McCoy’s quarters.

He was midway through brushing his teeth, when Jim realized he hadn’t felt dizzy at all. “Huh,” he murmured to himself, and spit. “What do you know.”

He didn’t want to scandalize Spock by having him fall asleep next to a man wearing clothes, and wake up next to one dressed only in his skivvies, so he changed his shirt into a cleaner, looser one, and pulled on some sweatpants suitable for public viewing. That accomplished, he scooted back into bed and ordered the computer to dim the lights the rest of the way. Spock rolled over to face him.

“Go back to sleep,” Jim whispered.

“Very well,” Spock muttered back, and did not say anything more. Jim stifled a chuckle. Experimentally, he rested his arm over Spock’s again. He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, and drifted back to sleep.

When he woke up the next morning, the imprint of him was there, but Spock was gone. Jim lay very still for a moment, breathing in through his nose, and trying not to feel disappointed. He didn’t have any, hell, _logical_ reason to feel like that, Jim reasoned, trying to summon the energy to sit up. Easier said than done. He was being ridiculous, Jim told himself firmly, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

As it turned out, Spock hadn’t gotten very far. Jim discovered this when he opened the bathroom door to find him standing at the sink, brushing his teeth. His hair was wet and he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Oh, god,” Jim said. He honestly didn’t know if he said it because he’d just walked in on a Vulcan in the bathroom right after he’d clearly just finished taking a water shower, or if it was because he was staring straight at Spock’s nipples. They were green. And perky.

Spock spat out the toothpaste. “I obtained the necessary equipment from Dr. McCoy,” he said casually, like Jim wasn’t trying to scrape his jaw off the floor. He indicated the toothbrush.

“Um,” Jim stammered. He cleared his throat. “That’s great. I, uh. I’ll let you get dressed.” He fled the bathroom only to sit heavily on his bed and drop his head into his hands with a groan.

God, what the hell was he even doing?

Spock emerged only a minute or two later, and by that time, Jim had more or less regained control of himself. “I’m going to, uh, shower,” he said, as Spock stood there. “Do you need—I mean, do you remember where the galley is?”

It wasn’t that big of a ship, so it would have been quite worrisome if Spock didn’t remember where the galley was, but Jim appreciated that Spock allowed him the polite fiction.

“Yes. May I break my fast there?”

“Yeah, definitely,” said Jim, relieved. “Feel free to eat whatever. it’s all communal unless it’s labeled. Um, McCoy might want to see you, too. And I don’t know if you know, but your pals—I mean, the other Vulcans are supposed to show up sometime today, but we haven’t had any subspace calls from them since the last one so who knows if they’re on schedule.” He was babbling. Shit. He made a concerted effort to shut his mouth.

“Very well,” said Spock. He continued to stand there.

“Okay.” Jim slowly edged towards the bathroom door. “I’ll just, um. See you later.”

“Yes,” Spock replied, and watched evenly as Jim retreated behind the bathroom door.

The shower and the change of clothes did wonders for Jim’s appetite, and he emerged from his quarters twenty minutes later with a spring in his step. He was pleased to note that whatever _else_ Spock had done in his head last night, the persistent headache and the balance issues seemed to be resolved for now. He did wonder how he was going to explain that particular piece of information to McCoy without incriminating Spock.

The worry became moot when he met Uhura halfway down the corridor to the galley. It was the look on her face that tipped him off. “Jim,” she said, and didn’t need to say anything more.

Jim let out a breath. “How close are they?”

“They’ve just dropped out of warp,” she said. “Chekov projects twenty minutes.” Jim’s stomach sunk the rest of the way.

“I’ll go tell him,” he said. “He’ll want to get his stuff together.”

“Jim, wait.” She had him by the sleeve. Her face was full of exactly the kind of concern that Jim didn’t want to be dealing with right now.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I just—I should let him know.” The look she gave him said she knew that it wasn’t actually fine, but she did let go of his shirt.

“Okay,” she said quietly. She nodded in the direction he had already been heading, though Jim didn’t feel hungry anymore. “He’s in the galley.”

“Thanks.” Jim tugged his shirt straight. “See you on the bridge.”

Sulu had beaten him to Spock in the galley. His pilot was sitting across the table from Spock, chatting amicably, when Jim poked his head around the door. As soon as Spock’s eyes met his, a wordless communication passed between them, and Spock inclined his head.

Jim didn’t see why he ought to stick around after that, it looked like Sulu had Spock well-handled, in any case, so he nodded to Spock and slipped back out again. They needed him on the bridge, anyway.

As circumstance would have it, the Vulcan ship sent their hail not a minute after Jim had taken his seat on the bridge. He ordered Uhura to open a channel, and she complied, her hands working over the funky controls with a serenity Jim wished he could match. He just had to hope that the screen didn’t crap out on them when they were trying to hold a conversation.

The image that eventually formed was shaky, but the subject was recognizably Vulcan. He was an older gentleman, with dark hair shot through with silver. Like all their seniors in an official capacity seemed to do, he was wearing a set of formal robes, inlaid with Vulcan script. He held up his hand in the ta’al, and Jim returned the gesture.

“Captain Kirk,” said the Vulcan. “Live long and prosper. I am Ambassador Sarek.”

Good lord, they’d sent him an ambassador? The guy did look a little familiar, now that Jim thought about it. Jim just hoped he wasn’t too important. Vulcans generally weren’t known for overkill, were they? Still, the return greeting tripped off of Jim’s tongue, as automatic as anything else Starfleet had drilled into him all those years ago.

“Peace and long life, Ambassador Sarek. It is fortunate your ship could arrive so quickly.” Uhura sent him an approving look at the phrasing, and Jim allowed himself a moment to bask in it.

“It is indeed fortunate,” Sarek returned. “I have been informed that one of the surviving crew of the _Bolayek_ is present upon your ship. Is this correct?”

“It is. Mr. Spock is currently on board. He is regaining his health after his ordeal, but has significantly improved since his initial wakening. We were uncertain as to the timing of your call. I believe he is breaking his fast, but if you would like to speak to him immediately, that can be arranged.”

“That would be preferable,” said Sarek. Jim nodded to Uhura, and she quietly sent a message down to the galley. Sarek continued, “My people would like for me to extend our…gratitude.” It looked almost physically painful for him to say it. “For your handling of the,” he hesitated, “of the situation.”

“Thank you,” said Jim.

“Is the abomination still contained within its, ah, new vessel?”

Jim nodded gravely. “The ring is being looked after by my engineer, a former decorated member of Starfleet.” (Like all the crew, excepting himself, Jim didn’t add. Sarek probably already knew that). “I believe he was working on rigging up an additional containment shield, in the event of a breach.”

“I see,” said Sarek. He looked like he was about to say more, but there was a small noise at Jim’s back as the door to the bridge opened, and Sarek’s gaze snapped up to look at the newcomer. _“Spock,”_ he said, and his voice sounded like it was a hair’s width away from honest to god breaking. Jim swiveled around to look.

For his part, standing in the doorway, Spock’s back had gone ramrod straight, his mouth opening slightly. To Jim, he couldn’t have looked more surprised. “Ambassador Sarek,” he managed, after a pause that was several moments too long. “I was not expecting that you would be among those sent to retrieve me.” His hand shot up, fingers already parted. “Live long and prosper.”

“You look well, Spock,” Sarek said, and Jim got the niggling sense that somehow, these two already knew each other. There was an awful lot of banked emotion flinging around for this to be just some kind of formality. By Vulcan standards, it was practically scandalous.

“I am healing.” Spock inclined his head. “In no small part due to the actions of Captain Kirk and his crew.”

“Yes, so I have been informed.” Sarek paused, then said. “I am gratified.”

 _Gratified_? Jesus, Jim thought. Who was this guy?

Sarek turned his attention back to Jim. “Captain Kirk,” he said, “I would like to collect Mr. Spock and the ring, as well as debrief with you and your crew regarding the situation, if you are amenable.”

“That seems reasonable,” Jim agreed.

“We can give you the codes for our beaming pad,” said Sarek. Jim tried not to wince, stoically pretending not to pay attention as, safely offscreen, both Uhura and Chekov frantically shook their heads.

“Actually,” he said, “We are currently having some, uh, technical issues with our, uh, transporter technology. A shuttle would probably be safest.”

“Very well,” said Sarek. “You may bring a shuttle over.” His gaze lit once more on Spock. “I will see you shortly.” When Spock nodded, Sarek turned back to Jim. “Live long and prosper.”

“Peace and long life,” Jim returned smoothly, and only relaxed when the screen had gone black again. He let out a breath. “Uhura,” he said, turning to her. “Could you get hold of Bones? I want the two of you on the shuttle with us. Chekov, think you can hold down the fort?”

“Of course, Captain.” Chekov saluted him sloppily. He then looked at Spock. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Spock,” he said. “I hope for you to have a safe journey home.”

“Likewise, Mr. Chekov,” said Spock. He pivoted to Jim. “Captain,” he said, “would you have a moment to direct me to the shuttle bay?”

Jim’s brow furrowed. He was pretty sure he’d told Spock where the shuttle bay was. It was kind of hard to miss. Still, curious, he allowed the pretense. “Of course.” He got to his feet. “Do you need to collect anything?”

“I have everything,” Spock replied. He was wearing his uniform from the _Bolayek_ again. The cut of the jacket emphasized the angularity of his face.

“Okay.” Spock waited until Jim had reached the door, and then followed him out.

The sound of their boots clicking on the metal flooring resounded as Jim led the way through the corridor to the tiny shuttle bay. Spock didn’t speak, and Jim didn’t blame him. Anything they might say felt like it would break this strange and fragile limbo they had found themselves in. In the meld it had felt like they had all the time in the world, but the truth now was that they had none.

But the silence was almost as unbearable, leaving them with nothing to focus on but the absence of words that had remained unsaid. So much so that when they reached the shuttle bay, desperate, Jim ventured, “So, you’ve met the ambassador before?”

“I have.” Spock linked his hands behind his back.

“He seemed to know you pretty well.”

Spock’s eyebrow lifted. “Yes, I believe so.” Jim was about to demand that Spock expound on that, because he got the sense that Spock was screwing with him a little, when Spock added, “He is my father, after all.”

“Your—” Jim gaped at him. “Are you serious?” No wonder he’d seemed familiar, Jim thought ruefully. He’d probably caught a glimpse of him, or at least an imprint of one, during the time he’d spent in Spock’s head.

“Vulcans do not lie, Jim,” Spock said imperiously, and there it was, that slightest betrayal in the hint of an upward curve to his lips. Jim slowly shook his head.

“That line only works on suckers, you know.”

Spock lifted an eyebrow, and Jim couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “I’m going to miss you,” he said, without thinking. Spock gave him a somber look, and Jim sighed. He stepped closer to Spock. “Sorry,” he said softly. “It’s true though, god help me. It’s weird, Bones probably thinks I need my head examined, but it’s true. Sorry.”

That close, Spock had to tilt his head down to meet Jim’s gaze. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Jim huffed out a short breath through his nose. “Don’t I?”

“Jim.” Spock caught his elbow. “If I were prone to wishing, I might wish that my crewmates had been spared, that I had not needed to spend so much time alone. But even given the chance, I would not change this.” His hand slowly slid up from Jim’s elbow to clasp his bicep. “I do not regret,” he said. “I would hope—” he hesitated, swallowing. “I would hope,” he said again, quietly but firmly, “that you would not either.”

Jim’s lips parted. He placed his own hand on top of Spock’s. “I could never regret you,” he said, and he tilted his mouth forward and kissed him.

For a brief, heart stopping moment, Spock didn’t move a muscle, and Jim feared that he had gotten it all wrong. Maybe what had passed in the meld had been his imagination, a product of crossed wires in the brain, something no Vulcan would ever actually conceive of doing—

Spock wrapped both arms around him and surged against him. He wasn’t just kissing Jim back, he was ravenous with it, as if Jim’s mouth on his, Jim’s breath mingling with his own, had been just the key to unlock the floodgates and let the river run wild. There wasn’t a meld, but they didn’t need one. He knew what Spock felt, he knew what he thought. It was all there in the touch of him, in the scent of him, in the wild thrum of his heartbeat and the strength of his hands. There was no shuttle, there was no Sarek, there was no imminent, inexorable parting.

Only the echo of McCoy and Uhura’s boots down the corridor was enough to bring them back to the present. When they separated, they stayed close for a moment, to linger like the final breath of summer. Jim brushed Spock’s hair back into place. Spock murmured into his ear, just like he had the night before, “You will never be alone, Jim.” And then withdrew.

When the other two joined them scant seconds later, they were two individuals once more, though only the blind could deny that there was something in the way they moved together that drew the eye. Regardless, Jim’s mission was to return Spock to his family, and Jim always completed his missions to the utmost of his ability.

And if, after the dust had settled, with Spock reunited with his father and the ring locked safely away until it could be returned to the priests at Gol, Jim sat alone in his room, staring at nothing and feeling only absence where once there had been warmth and light, well.

He knew he was not alone.

 

 


	8. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the end. Thank you so much to all of you who have been reading along and sending such kind and encouraging comments. You're fantastic, and your comments and kudos mean the world to me, and make writing fic a vastly more rewarding experience. Until next time!

There had been a time when a lot of Jim’s favorite stories started out at bars on the pleasure planet Risa. First of all, Jim admired the Risians. It had to take a certain amount of gumption to come up with the idea of becoming the prime, hedonistic tourist attraction in the Alpha Quadrant, and then convince the entire rest of the planet to go along with it, _and_ make it work, and Jim appreciated that sort of moxie. Time was, he had appreciated all sorts of different kinds of moxie, to be quite honest.

McCoy was trying to remind him of this. “Look, Jimmy,” he was saying. He didn’t need to slur his words for Jim to know that he was smashed. Even if Jim hadn’t watched McCoy down three separate cocktails, and that was after the beers at dinner, McCoy only ever called him Jimmy when he was feeling drunk or emotional.

Oftentimes, it was some combination of the two, but since Jim had an in on this one, he knew it was definitely the alcohol talking.

“You should’ve gone with her,” he was saying, and Jim massaged his temples.

“Maybe you should have.”

“Nah.” McCoy hiccupped. “Not my type.”

Jim rolled his eyes. “Every woman’s your type.”

“No.” McCoy pointed an accusatory finger at him. “That’s you, Jimmy boy. I, on the other hand, have a very discerning—discerning, um, pallet.”

“Yeah,” Jim said to the bartender, who had come over to check on them, “we’re going to need to close our tab.”

“Damn it, Jim.” McCoy slumped next to him. “We got paid today. You should be celebrating!”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Jim indicated the shiny obsidian of the bar top, the brightly colored curtains, and the scantily clad dancers of all varieties. And he meant _all._ An aroma of flowers wafted through the open patio along with the tropical breeze of the Risian night. He groaned internally when McCoy’s eyes narrowed.

“You haven’t been the same,” McCoy said. “It’s been almost six months, Jim. You gotta—you gotta let it go.”

“Bones,” Jim said warningly.

“And I know, you and that pointy-eared heartbreaker shared something unusual, but after all this time, he ain’t ever called, he ain’t ever write—”

“Bones!” Jim snapped, regretting ever confessing to McCoy in a moment of weakness and booze. “That’s enough.”

McCoy’s whole body drooped. “I’m just trying to look out for you, Jim,” he said. “It ain’t fair. You deserve better.”

Jim sighed. “It’s fine,” he said.

“It’s not fine,” McCoy insisted angrily, and Jim cast around for a distraction. He found it in the form of Scotty, who was heading their way with a trio of tankards. Jim had a sinking feeling that one of the drinks was meant for him. He climbed off the barstool and clapped McCoy on the back. “Looks like Scotty’s going to need some help with those,” he said. “I’m gonna hit the head.”

Before McCoy could protest, Jim was already away and weaving through the crowd. He didn’t want to give McCoy the opportunity to argue.

He visited the facilities because he was there anyway, but afterwards he didn’t head back to McCoy and Scotty. He knew by now that if Scotty was buying, they’d probably been joined already by at least Sulu and probably Chekov, and Jim, to be honest, just wasn’t in the mood. He slipped outside instead, away from the crush and laughter of people, to take a deep breath of fresh air. Leaning against the wall of the bar, he tipped his head back to gaze at the night sky.

McCoy was right. He hated to admit it, but he absolutely was. Jim had changed. He didn’t want to go off with a Risian girl, no matter how well her hips shimmied, or how pretty her eyes sparkled. She couldn’t give him what he wanted. Her warmth would be superficial, his bed cold the next morning. She couldn’t give him that riptide of drowning so much in another person that they knew you better than you even knew yourself. No one could give him that. Not on Risa, not on Starbase 16, not on Earth…

Only Spock—

Jim hit the wall with his fist. His knuckles stung at the impact. Spock was on Vulcan, he reminded himself. He was probably back at the lab, or lecturing students at the VSA, or doing god knows what else the respectable son of an ambassador would do. And where was Jim? On Risa, a scrapper fallen accidentally on a lucky haul, drinking at an establishment barely a notch above their usual dregs.

Jim slumped to the ground. It was filthy, smelled of alcohol and piss and rain. His knuckles were probably bleeding. He wanted to go home.

He did the next best thing, which was to haul himself off the ground and drag his pitiful ass back to the hotel room. He sent a message to McCoy saying he was tired, so that they couldn’t accuse him of being a complete asshole, and walked the fifteen minutes through the lively streets in a tired, sulky stupor. It was close to the Risian New Year, and that meant double, maybe even triple the usual number of revelers. Jim almost wished they’d gone to some no-name backwater instead, where at least he could have wallowed in peace, and probably with better scenery.

No, he told himself firmly. The crew deserved this. They had worked hard for that haul, and they deserved every credit and all the booze they could spend it on.

He was so focused on his thoughts that he almost passed by the hotel before he even realized that it was there. It was only the distinctive whorls of the wrought iron fence surrounding the property that caught his attention in time. He backtracked a few steps, then reached a hand out and swung open the gate. It creaked as he did so, and Jim rolled his eyes. He honestly didn’t know what native Risian architecture was supposed to look like, but his hotel looked like it had been modeled after a mistranslated description of an old Southern Gothic mansion, right down to the old lace curtains and the wartime ghost haunting the attic.

He suspected that was why McCoy had selected it, but hadn’t found the appropriate moment to broach the topic.

Jim’s one capitulation to their sudden monetary luck was the splurge for his own room. He was on the third floor, and his feet felt heavy on the wooden stairs as they creaked with a rhythm too congruent with the rest of the hotel’s atmosphere to be entirely genuine. In front of the door to his room, he fumbled for the key in his pocket and then pressed it against the code pad. The lock clicked, the door swung inward, and Jim began to step inside. Just after he had crossed the threshold however, he halted.

There was someone sitting on his bed.

Backlit by the streetlight through the window, the figure was hooded, their face turned away. They were sitting very still, hands clasped loosely in their lap, as if they had been waiting patiently, and would continue to do so for as long as necessary.

“What the—?” said Jim, and then he recovered himself. “Who the hell are you?” he barked. “How did you get in here?” As he did so, he stabbed at the lights. They flickered on just as the figure fluidly stood from the bed and threw back their hood.

“I picked the lock,” said Spock. Jim dropped the key.

“Spock?” he said in disbelief. He rubbed at his eyes until he saw stars. Yep, still a Vulcan in his room. “What—I mean, _how_ —I mean—” his eyes narrowed. “Wait, you picked my lock? Why?”

“The proprietor refused to grant me access,” said Spock, and he sounded incredibly put out about it.

“So, you just picked the lock?” Jim repeated, dazed. He ran his fingers through his hair. “You just—you couldn’t have waited?”

“I did not wish to wait.” He took a step towards Jim. Jim’s mouth grew dry. Back against the wall, he slowly sank to the floor and put his head in his hands.

“What is going on?” he said to his knees.

Footsteps. A hand on his shoulder. Jim lifted his head to find Spock kneeling in front of him. He was actually wearing full-on textbook Vulcan robes, Jim thought, a little hysterically. Go figure.

“Jim, you do not seem well.”

Jim let out a wet chuckle. “I am a little drunk,” he admitted. “I might be hallucinating you.”

A pause. “I am not a hallucination.”

Swallowing, Jim nodded. And then, steeling himself he asked, “What brings you here?”

“I would have assumed that was obvious.”

 _It really wasn’t_ , Jim thought desperately. “How long will you stay for?”

Spock hesitated. Jim squeezed his hands into fists so hard the knuckles turned white. “I intend to stay for as long as you would permit me,” he said finally. Jim’s breath caught in his throat.

“You what?”

“I said, I intend to—” but he was cut off as Jim hooked his arm around Spock’s neck and yanked him into kiss. Spock and all of his bony knees and elbows crashed into Jim, but Jim didn’t care because Spock was kissing him back enthusiastically, and all the parts of Jim’s brain, his heart, his essence that had lain dormant these past six months flared to life.

“Six months,” Jim snarled, into Spock’s open mouth, reaching for the clasps on Spock’s clothing. “I can’t believe you made me wait six—” There were a lot of layers to this stupid robe, “—six goddamn months.”

Spock caught Jim’s hand at the wrist as it went seeking. He drew back, enough so that he could meet Jim’s eyes. There was high color in his cheeks, his lips were glistening and swollen, and his pupils blown wide. Still, his face was completely serious as he said, “I am sorry, Jim.”

Caught in his gaze, Jim exhaled. Something welled up in him, something that felt dangerous. Suddenly he didn’t care about the most efficient way to get Spock naked. All he cared about was getting him as close as possible. He pulled one hand out of Spock’s robes, and the other one out of his grip, and instead wrapped his arms around him in a tight embrace. Chin hooked over Spock’s shoulder, he confessed, “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

Spock’s hand came up to cradle the back of Jim’s head. “That was never in question.” His voice was gravelly, deep, just as Jim remembered it. Jim closed his eyes.

“Why did you take so long?”

He could hear Spock swallow above him. “I found it necessary to visit several of the mind healers on my planet,” he said. “I wished to return to you—whole.”

Jim gripped him tighter. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

“Interesting,” said Spock. “My mother professed the same.”

“How completely emotional,” Jim murmured. “I won’t tell anyone.” There was a pause.

“My mother is human.”

Jim froze. He drew back. “Wait, what?” Spock’s eyes darted to him and then away.

"I didn't tell you before," he said. "I didn't-" Something colored his voice. _Shame._ "If we are to proceed," he said. "Honesty is paramount." He swallowed _,_ and Jim understood. This was Spock bringing himself, the rest of himself. This was his vulnerability. This was his trust.

“Must be one special lady,” he said, and knew he’d picked the right answer when Spock’s shoulders loosened.

“She is a singular being.”

“I’ll bet.” Jim let go of him, and Spock got to his feet. Jim allowed himself to be heaved upward, and when he was standing, stumbled over to the bed, Spock trailing behind him, their hands clasped. The springs on the bed creaked as they sat. Jim leaned against him. He felt solid. _Honesty is paramount._ “So, you want to slum it with the scrappers, huh?”

Spock frowned. “I would not be slumming.”

“It’s not glamorous. Not a lot of opportunities for research.” Jim watched his face for any sign of hesitation, even the most minute. Spock already knew about him. His discharge, his dishonor. He didn't regret what he had done, knew the alternative would've been his career at the cost of his soul, rather than the opposite, but Jim still watched. 

There was no hesitation. “I can conduct my research regardless of location.” The words were arrogant, but he said them without a hint of it, like he was just stating basic facts. Jim supposed he was.

“Is that so.”

“It is.”

“Hmm.” Jim decided he liked Spock’s hands. Experimentally, he traced his fingers along Spock’s knuckles. He was surprised when Spock inhaled sharply.

“Like this,” he said. He pressed the tips of his index and middle finger to Jim’s and slowly rubbed up and down. Jim felt a spark thrum low at the base of his skull. His breath caught. “In public,” said Spock. “On Vulcan. An acceptable gesture of affection.”

“A kiss?”

Spock answered by turning his head and capturing Jim’s mouth. “A kiss,” he agreed, when he drew back.

“Mmm.” Jim tried again. “It’s nice,” he murmured. Really, what was nice was the way Spock trembled when he did it, but Jim supposed that was rather obvious. “So, you’re just going to do research while we loot abandoned ships?”

“Though I intend to travel with you regardless, I suspect some of your crew may have reservations about the addition of an inexperienced individual such as myself. Especially given—past history.” Spock’s voice was rather even for someone who was in the midst of having their hand fondled, Jim thought. He straightened.

“It’s not up to them.”

“Regardless. I do not wish to be the cause of friction between you and your crew. Therefore, I have a proposition for you.”

“A proposition?”

Spock tilted his head, a glint in his eye. “A job.”

“Oh?” Jim furrowed his brow. “What kind of job?”

Spock’s voice took on a more serious tone. “The remainder of the _Bolayek_ ’s crew is still unaccounted for,” he said. “Due to the sensitive nature of the ship’s mission, the High Council does not wish to turn the search over to Starfleet.”

Jim blinked, already seeing where this was going. “You guys want to hire us to look for the survivors?”

Spock took his hand again. “The Council would trust a Vulcan crew, but a Vulcan crew would not blend in as the nature of the job may require. Human scrappers are ubiquitous—”

“Thanks,” said Jim dryly.

“—you may go places a Vulcan crew could not, at least not without drawing undue attention.”

“My favorite kind.”

“Jim.” Spock said his name like a quiet plea. “The Council has seen the records of your crew. You were Starfleet’s finest.”

“Yeah, _were_ ,” Jim snorted. Spock shook his head.

“Their loss may be my peoples’ gain.” He touched Jim’s shoulder. “Will you consider it?”

Jim let out a long breath. He twisted on the bed so that he was facing Spock, and gathered both of Spock’s hands in his own. “We’re not Starfleet anymore, Spock. We’re out of shape, out of practice.” He grimaced. “I don’t know why you’d want to hire us for something like this.” In response, Spock leaned forward until their foreheads met.

“I know you, Jim,” he said quietly. “I know what feats you, and your crew, are capable of. I have seen it, remember?” He let go of Jim’s hand and pressed his own hand to Jim’s temple, and then down to his chest, over his heart. “Trust me when I say: you are the most logical option.”

“The most logical option, huh?” Jim said, his throat tight.

Spock nodded.

“And you’ll come with?”

“My presence is not contingent upon your acceptance.”

Jim closed his eyes. “I’ll have to discuss it with the crew.”

“I expected as much. I do not require an immediate answer.”

“Bones still might try and kill you. He was kind of mad about the meld thing.”

“I will remain vigilant.”

Jim snorted. “Come here, you.” He toppled backwards onto the bed, pulling Spock with him. Spock went easily enough, which Jim appreciated. When they were both prone, Jim brushed his fingers through Spock’s hair. It was soft and very fine, perfect for petting. “I’m a lot to put up with,” Jim said. “Sometimes I can be a real jerk. Moody. Especially when my knee’s acting up. I stress eat like no one’s business.”

“I have been informed by previous partners that although my dedication to my work is admirable, it is logical to cultivate additional hobbies,” said Spock. “Humans find me distant. I am satisfied to eat plomeek for upwards of fifty percent of my meals.” He hesitated. “I may snore.”

Jim rolled over to kiss him. “I think we can work it out.” He grinned when Spock tugged him back into a second kiss, and laughed into it.

“I agree,” said Spock, and curled his free arm around Jim’s shoulder, an embrace of body and mind both. And into Jim’s skin he whispered the truth that bound them together, through time and space, inside conscious thought, and beyond it. “You will never be alone again.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Aerlalaith.tumblr.com


End file.
